{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,17]],"date-time":"2026-03-17T00:20:10Z","timestamp":1773706810370,"version":"3.50.1"},"reference-count":42,"publisher":"World Scientific Pub Co Pte Ltd","issue":"03","funder":[{"name":"King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia","award":["RSPD2024R704"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["RSPD2024R704"]}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Int. J. Soft. Eng. Knowl. Eng."],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2025,3]]},"abstract":"<jats:p> Story point estimation is a key practice in Agile project management that assigns effort values to user stories, helping teams manage workloads effectively. Inaccurate story point estimation can lead to project delays, resource misallocation and budget overruns. This study introduces Story Point Estimation using Reinforced Transformers (SPERT), a novel model that integrates transformer-based embeddings with reinforcement learning (RL) to improve the accuracy of story point estimation. SPERT utilizes Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) embeddings, which capture the deep semantic relationships within user stories, while the RL component refines predictions dynamically based on project feedback. We evaluate SPERT across multiple Agile projects and benchmark its performance against state-of-the-art models, including SBERT-XG, LHC-SE, Deep-SE and TF-IDF-SE. Results demonstrate that SPERT outperforms these models in terms of Mean Absolute Error (MAE), Median Absolute Error (MdAE) and Standardized Accuracy (SA). Statistical analysis using Wilcoxon tests and A12 effect size confirms the significance of SPERT\u2019s performance, highlighting its ability to generalize across diverse projects and improve estimation accuracy in Agile environments. <\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1142\/s0218194025500044","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2024,12,11]],"date-time":"2024-12-11T08:23:33Z","timestamp":1733905413000},"page":"293-325","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":3,"title":["SPERT: Reinforcement Learning-Enhanced Transformer Model for Agile Story Point Estimation"],"prefix":"10.1142","volume":"35","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-7858-1779","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Waleed","family":"Younas","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Software Technology, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0007-2324-0030","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Rui","family":"Chen","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Software Technology, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-8529-3399","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Jing","family":"Zhao","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Software Technology, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0003-6184-5736","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Tahreem","family":"Iqbal","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Software Technology, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-6722-8366","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Mohamed","family":"Sharaf","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Industrial Engineering Department, College of Engineering, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-3598-2780","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Azhar","family":"Imran","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Creative Technologies, Air University Islamabad, Islamabad, Pakistan"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"219","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2025,2,6]]},"reference":[{"key":"S0218194025500044BIB001","volume-title":"Agile Project Management with Scrum","author":"Schwaber K.","year":"2004"},{"key":"S0218194025500044BIB005","volume-title":"Software Engineering Economics","author":"Boehm B.","year":"1981"},{"key":"S0218194025500044BIB006","first-page":"83","volume-title":"Proc. Joint SHARE\/GUIDE\/IBM Application Development Symposium","author":"Albrecht A. J.","year":"1979"},{"key":"S0218194025500044BIB008","volume-title":"Essential Scrum: A Practical Guide to the Most Popular Agile Process","author":"Rubin K. S.","year":"2012"},{"key":"S0218194025500044BIB009","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1109\/REW53955.2021.00022"},{"key":"S0218194025500044BIB010","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.32604\/cmc.2021.017461"},{"key":"S0218194025500044BIB011","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.3390\/app14167305"},{"key":"S0218194025500044BIB012","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.18653\/v1\/D19-1410"},{"key":"S0218194025500044BIB013","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1007\/s10462-020-09896-5"},{"key":"S0218194025500044BIB014","first-page":"e2290","volume":"32","author":"Xu W.","year":"2020","journal-title":"J. Softw.: Evol. Process"},{"key":"S0218194025500044BIB015","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"110717","DOI":"10.1016\/j.jss.2020.110717","volume":"170","author":"Gao Y.","year":"2020","journal-title":"J. Syst. Softw."},{"key":"S0218194025500044BIB016","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1109\/TSE.2018.2792473"},{"key":"S0218194025500044BIB017","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1","DOI":"10.1016\/j.eswa.2018.03.050","volume":"106","author":"Li Z.","year":"2018","journal-title":"Expert Syst. Appl."},{"key":"S0218194025500044BIB018","first-page":"4171","volume-title":"Proc. 2019 Conf. North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies","author":"Devlin J.","year":"2019"},{"key":"S0218194025500044BIB020","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1109\/ACCESS.2023.3307310"},{"key":"S0218194025500044BIB021","volume-title":"Reinforcement Learning: An Introduction","author":"Sutton R. S.","year":"2018"},{"key":"S0218194025500044BIB023","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1093\/comjnl\/bxy141"},{"key":"S0218194025500044BIB024","first-page":"110901","volume":"174","author":"Jiang Q.","year":"2021","journal-title":"J. Syst. Softw."},{"key":"S0218194025500044BIB025","first-page":"175","volume":"24","author":"Fernandez D. M.","year":"2019","journal-title":"Requir. Eng."},{"key":"S0218194025500044BIB026","first-page":"11","volume-title":"Proc. 26th Int. Requirements Engineering Conf.","author":"Xu W.","year":"2018"},{"key":"S0218194025500044BIB027","first-page":"11","volume-title":"2020 IEEE\/ACM Int. Conf. Software and System Process","author":"Matsumoto Y.","year":"2020"},{"key":"S0218194025500044BIB028","first-page":"78","volume":"107","author":"Zhang J.","year":"2019","journal-title":"Inf. Softw. Technol."},{"key":"S0218194025500044BIB029","first-page":"1","volume-title":"Proc. 2020 Int. Conf. Computer Science, Communication and Information Systems","author":"Wang S.","year":"2020"},{"key":"S0218194025500044BIB030","first-page":"10","volume":"178","author":"Rathore S.","year":"2019","journal-title":"Int. J. Comput. Appl."},{"key":"S0218194025500044BIB031","first-page":"1052","volume-title":"2020 IEEE Int. Conf. Software Engineering","author":"McQuillin D.","year":"2020"},{"key":"S0218194025500044BIB032","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"106348","DOI":"10.1016\/j.infsof.2020.106348","volume":"126","author":"Tawosi H.","year":"2020","journal-title":"Inf. Softw. Technol."},{"key":"S0218194025500044BIB033","first-page":"e2345","volume":"33","author":"Pan Y.","year":"2021","journal-title":"J. Softw.: Evol. Process"},{"key":"S0218194025500044BIB034","first-page":"234","volume-title":"Proc. 2021 Int. Conf. Software Engineering","author":"Fernandez D. M.","year":"2021"},{"key":"S0218194025500044BIB035","first-page":"73170","volume":"9","author":"Faris H. M.","year":"2021","journal-title":"IEEE Access"},{"key":"S0218194025500044BIB036","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"105657","DOI":"10.1016\/j.asoc.2019.105657","volume":"83","author":"Mao Z.","year":"2019","journal-title":"Appl. Soft Comput."},{"key":"S0218194025500044BIB037","first-page":"110946","volume":"176","author":"Gao J.","year":"2021","journal-title":"J. Syst. Softw."},{"key":"S0218194025500044BIB039","first-page":"106495","volume":"132","author":"Xia X.","year":"2021","journal-title":"Inf. Softw. Technol."},{"key":"S0218194025500044BIB040","first-page":"106482","volume":"130","author":"Pan Y.","year":"2021","journal-title":"Inf. Softw. Technol."},{"key":"S0218194025500044BIB041","first-page":"114767","volume":"174","author":"Niu C.","year":"2021","journal-title":"Expert Syst. Appl."},{"key":"S0218194025500044BIB042","first-page":"526","volume-title":"2023 IEEE\/ACM 45th Int. Conf. Software Engineering","author":"Schalken M.","year":"2023"},{"key":"S0218194025500044BIB043","first-page":"106357","volume":"124","author":"Patel V.","year":"2020","journal-title":"Inf. Softw. Technol."},{"key":"S0218194025500044BIB044","first-page":"345","volume":"13","author":"Pargaonkar S.","year":"2023","journal-title":"Int. J. Sci. Res. Publ."},{"issue":"1","key":"S0218194025500044BIB046","first-page":"1929","volume":"15","author":"Srivastava N.","year":"2014","journal-title":"J. Mach. Learn. Res."},{"issue":"9","key":"S0218194025500044BIB048","first-page":"1943","volume":"47","author":"Chen Z.","year":"2019","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Softw. Eng."},{"issue":"3","key":"S0218194025500044BIB049","first-page":"462","volume":"23","author":"Sarro F.","year":"2016","journal-title":"Autom. Softw. Eng."},{"key":"S0218194025500044BIB050","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1016\/j.infsof.2011.12.008"},{"key":"S0218194025500044BIB051","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1109\/TSE.2021.3083360"}],"container-title":["International Journal of Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/www.worldscientific.com\/doi\/pdf\/10.1142\/S0218194025500044","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2025,4,9]],"date-time":"2025-04-09T01:53:40Z","timestamp":1744163620000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/www.worldscientific.com\/doi\/10.1142\/S0218194025500044"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2025,2,6]]},"references-count":42,"journal-issue":{"issue":"03","published-print":{"date-parts":[[2025,3]]}},"alternative-id":["10.1142\/S0218194025500044"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1142\/s0218194025500044","relation":{},"ISSN":["0218-1940","1793-6403"],"issn-type":[{"value":"0218-1940","type":"print"},{"value":"1793-6403","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2025,2,6]]}}}