Guideline for Sizing Agile Projects with COSMIC
Luigi Buglione, Sylvie Trudel · 2010
Agile became one of the most used ‘buzzwords’ in ICT projects in these recent years but the growing diffusion and interest of its related methods and techniques was not accompanied by the same maturity in sizing and estimation practices. In particular the application of a functional size measurement (FSM) method for sizing requirements is not typical to ”agilists”, preferring to use mostly estimations based on experience and analogy. In such way, one of several drawbacks is a reduced data gathering from projects, not allowing to do (even at a basic level) statistical analysis, for better estimating the proper efforts value for next user story and – as a whole – of the project. This paper describes the reasons why a guideline for sizing Agile projects with the COSMIC method was required, along with a summary of the resulting guideline. Several agile methods are briefly described, more specifically their expected requirements format and their measurement practices.