Software sizing

The purpose of the count determines the counting scope. This step basically involves determining the type of function point count — development, enhancement, or application. The second step is to define the application boundary. Basically, a boundary indicates the border between the project or application being counted, and the external applications or users. The third step is to identify and rate the data functions. ILF: Logical group of data maintained by the application under study e.

Transaction functionality satisfies the functional user requirements that process data. After identifying and rating the data functions and transaction functions, the purpose and counting scope shall be considered when selecting and using the appropriate formula to calculate the functional size. The size of a software project is different from the size of the resulting software product. This count specifies the size of the application or the project, based on the functionality provided from the user perspective.

The figure bellow shows the four types of data movements. What is Software Sizing? Software size Thanks to artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques, Estimancy Automated calculation of the size of the software to be developed measures the size of the software from specifications in natural language.

Thanks to our solution, you can: no longer need the help of a Function Points expert after the training phase ; save time; Answer faster quotation demand; Get more reliable function points estimates. Technical size vs. The pros of Software Sizing Thanks to software sizing, you can implement performance indicators such as: Productivity: the amount of produced software over time, Quality: number of defects for a quantity of software, Maintenance cost according to the size of the application.

Estimate Software size Taille logicielle. Related posts Blog. English French. Risk management enables you to identify and address potential threats to a project, whether they result from internal issues or conditions or from external factors that you may not be able to control. Problems associated with sizing and estimating software potentially can have dramatic negative effects. The key word here is potentially, which means that if problems can be foreseen and their causes acted upon in time, effects can be mitigated.

The risk management process is the means of doing so. Many managers incorrectly perceive that if they identify risks that subsequently become problems they will be held responsible for the problems.

In fact, the opposite is true. By using risk management techniques to anticipate potential risks, the manager is protected against liability because if the problem does occur, it can be demonstrated that the cause was beyond what any prudent manager could have foreseen.

Although cost, schedule, and product performance risks are interrelated, they can also be analyzed independently. In practice, risks must be identified as specific instances in order to be manageable. At this point in the process, your estimate should already be reasonable.

It is still important to validate your methods and your results, which is simply a systematic confirmation of the integrity of an estimate. By validating the estimate, you can be more confident that your data is sound, your methods are effective, your results are accurate, and your focus is properly directed.

There are many ways to validate an estimate. Both the process used to build the estimate and the estimate itself must be evaluated. Ideally, the validation should be performed by someone who was not involved in generating the estimate itself, who can view it objectively. The analyst validating an estimate should employ different methods, tools and separately collected data than were used in the estimate under review.

When reviewing an estimate you must assess the assumptions made during the estimation process. Make sure that the adopted ground rules are consistently applied throughout the estimate.

Below-the-line costs and the risk associated with extraordinary requirements may have been underestimated or overlooked, while productivity estimates may have been overstated. The slippery slope of requirements creep may have created more uncertainty than was accounted for in the original estimate.

A rigorous validation process will expose faulty assumptions, unreliable data and estimator bias, providing a clearer understanding of the risks inherent in your projections. Having isolated problems at their source, you can take steps to contain the risks associated with them, and you will have a more realistic picture of what your project will actually require to succeed. Despite the costs of performing one, a formal validation should be scheduled into every estimation project, before the estimate is used to establish budgets or constraints on your project process or product engineering.

Failing to do so may result in much greater downstream costs, or even a failed project. The process of generating a project plan includes taking the estimate and allocating the cost and schedule to a function and task-oriented work breakdown structure.

A good software manager must possess a broad range of technical software development experience and domain knowledge, and must be able to manage people and the unique dynamics of a team environment, recognize project and staff dysfunction, and lead so as to achieve the expected or essential result.

Some managers, mainly due to lack of experience, are not able to evaluate what effects their decisions will have over the long run. They either lack necessary information, or incorrectly believe that if they take the time to develop that information the project will suffer as a result. Other managers make decisions based on what they think higher management wants to hear. This is a significant mistake. A good software manager will understand what a project can realistically achieve, even if it is not what higher management wants.

His job is to explain the reality in language his managers can understand. Software management and planning problems have been recognized for decades as the leading causes of software project failures. In addition to the types of management choices discussed above, three other issues contribute to project failure: bad management decisions, incorrect focus, and destructive politics.

Models such as SEER-SEM handle these issues by guiding you in making appropriate changes in the environment related to people, process, and products. Each time you complete an estimate and again at the end of the software development, you should document the pertinent information that constitutes the estimate and record the lessons you learned.

By doing so, you will have evidence that your process was valid and that you generated the estimate in good faith, and you will have actual results with which to substantiate or calibrate your estimation models. Be sure to document any missing or incomplete information and the risks, issues, and problems that the process addressed and any complications that arose.

Also document all the key decisions made during the conduct of the estimate and their results and the effects of the actions you took. Finally, describe and document the dynamics that occurred during the process, such as the interactions of your estimation team, the interfaces with your clients, and trade-offs you had to make to address issues identified during the process. Lessons-learned sessions can range from two team members meeting to reach a consensus about the various issues that went into the estimation process to highly structured meetings conducted by external facilitators who employ formal questionnaires.

No matter what form it may take, it is always better to hold a lessons-learned meeting than not, even if the meeting is a burden on those involved. Every software project should be used as an opportunity to improve the estimating process.

Estimating software size, cost, and schedule should be an ongoing process. Preliminary estimates are the hardest to develop because of the incomplete nature of the information available and the other factors discussed. You can improve the accuracy of a preliminary estimate by using the sizing methodology identified in Step 4 or by using two different estimation techniques and having your analysts normalize the differences.

Once a project has started, you should use the estimates as a basis for performance measurement and project control. Software cost estimation is a difficult process but a necessary part of a successful software development. You can help ensure useful results by adopting a process that is standardized and repeatable.

Several of the steps we have discussed, particularly those that do not result directly in the production of the estimate Steps 1, 6, and 9 are often deferred or, worse still, not performed at all, often for what appear to be good reasons such as a lack of adequate time or resources or a reluctance to face the need to devise a plan if a problem is detected. Sometimes management is reluctant to take these steps, not because the resources are not available, but because managers do not want to really know what they may learn as a result of scoping their estimates, quantifying and analyzing risks, or validating their estimates.

This can be a costly attitude because in reality, every shortcut results in dramatic increases in project risks. Software sizing is used to estimate the size of a software application or component to support cost estimating, progress tracking, and other software project management activities. CISQ has published two standards for automating the measurement of software size:.