A Worked Function Point model for effective software project size evaluation
Luca Santillo, Italo Della Noce · 2005
This work explains the Worked Function Point model for effective software project size evaluation. This model was originally proposed in a contractual framework of fixed cost per function point, in order to achieve a more significant “worked size” to be correlated with development effort and cost. The model is suitable also for internal development estimation, wherever an average productivity is applied to a large set of non-homogeneous software projects. The model structure is based upon measurement of software reuse, replication, complexity, and change request impact during the project lifecycle; specific metrics are proposed for such aspects, and a overall combination of those is suggested to move from standard functional size measures to effective worked size measures. Reuse and replication adjustments include consideration of functional as well as technical “similarity” among functions, over the same or distinct platforms, respectively. Complexity adjustment takes into account both base components internal complexity and external (overall) system complexity; a weighting profile scheme, or worked size mask, is eventually proposed to take into account the intrinsic differences when evaluating complexity for different system types or domains. The change request evaluation is based on an enhancement-like approach, as applied to an on-going project. Specific experimentation and case-studies are carried out in a public administration contractual framework, upon projects extracted from the software portfolio management of the Provincia Autonoma of Trento.