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Software size estimation is a vital activity of software project planning and management. Early software size estimation is a challenging task due to the limited information available during the early phases of software development. The goal of this paper is to construct and validate early software size estimation models based on four analysis-to-design adjustment factor (ADAF)-adjusted analysis class diagram metrics (i.e. ADAF-adjusted number of classes, ADAF-adjusted number of attributes, ADAF-adjusted number of methods and ADAF-adjusted number of relationships) using stepwise multiple linear regression and leave-one-out cross-validation. Furthermore, the prediction accuracy of the best-performing proposed model is also compared with the model based on objective class points. The results of this comparison reveal that our proposed method reduces errors significantly (i.e. on average, 16% reduction in mean absolute residual and 24% reduction in mean squared error). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]