An LLM-based multi-agent framework for agile effort estimation

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Bui, Thanh-Long, Dam, Hoa Khanh, Hoda, Rashina
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
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author Bui, Thanh-Long
Dam, Hoa Khanh
Hoda, Rashina
author_facet Bui, Thanh-Long
Dam, Hoa Khanh
Hoda, Rashina
contents Effort estimation is a crucial activity in agile software development, where teams collaboratively review, discuss, and estimate the effort required to complete user stories in a product backlog. Current practices in agile effort estimation heavily rely on subjective assessments, leading to inaccuracies and inconsistencies in the estimates. While recent machine learning-based methods show promising accuracy, they cannot explain or justify their estimates and lack the capability to interact with human team members. Our paper fills this significant gap by leveraging the powerful capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs). We propose a novel LLM-based multi-agent framework for agile estimation that not only can produce estimates, but also can coordinate, communicate and discuss with human developers and other agents to reach a consensus. Evaluation results on a real-life dataset show that our approach outperforms state-of-the-art techniques across all evaluation metrics in the majority of the cases. Our human study with software development practitioners also demonstrates an overwhelmingly positive experience in collaborating with our agents in agile effort estimation.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_14483
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle An LLM-based multi-agent framework for agile effort estimation
Bui, Thanh-Long
Dam, Hoa Khanh
Hoda, Rashina
Software Engineering
Effort estimation is a crucial activity in agile software development, where teams collaboratively review, discuss, and estimate the effort required to complete user stories in a product backlog. Current practices in agile effort estimation heavily rely on subjective assessments, leading to inaccuracies and inconsistencies in the estimates. While recent machine learning-based methods show promising accuracy, they cannot explain or justify their estimates and lack the capability to interact with human team members. Our paper fills this significant gap by leveraging the powerful capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs). We propose a novel LLM-based multi-agent framework for agile estimation that not only can produce estimates, but also can coordinate, communicate and discuss with human developers and other agents to reach a consensus. Evaluation results on a real-life dataset show that our approach outperforms state-of-the-art techniques across all evaluation metrics in the majority of the cases. Our human study with software development practitioners also demonstrates an overwhelmingly positive experience in collaborating with our agents in agile effort estimation.
title An LLM-based multi-agent framework for agile effort estimation
topic Software Engineering
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.14483