Business viability of potential software projects using artificial neural network

Abstract

Selection of a software project is a critical decision. This selection involves prediction to ascertain a project that provides the best business value to the organization. The process of selection is carefully undertaken to optimize scarce resources available, which makes it impossible to simultaneously invest in all business ideas and systems. The current traditional method of software selection does not consider risk factors among the many variables necessary to predict a project that could provide the best business value. More so, the current method such as an artificial intelligence approach, where project managers use more robust models to make predictions have not received the needed attention in developing models for software project selection. This research applied a branch of Artificial Intelligence called Artificial Neural Network to classify projects into three levels. The research designed an artificial neural network of four inputs, one hidden layer with twenty-seven (27) neurons, and three outputs. Keras, a python deep learning library that runs on a theano background was used to implement the model. This research used a secondary dataset, which was enhanced by the synthetic approach, to make the required data features needed in machine learning applications. Backpropagation Algorithm enabled the model to train and learn from the data, and K-fold cross-validation was used to measure the accuracy of the model on unseen data. The results of the simulation showed that the model performed up to 98.67% accuracy with a standard deviation of 2.6% performance on unseen data. The research concludes that using the artificial neural network for software project selection unleashes a new vista of opportunities in artificial i ntelligence where intelligent systems are developed based on robust models from data forproject selection.

Keywords: Artificial Neural Network, Project selection, Machine Learning

Vol. 26, No. 1, June 2019