Software Sizing and Productivity with Function Points

Abstract—Software sizing is one of the most challenging, and critical activities in software project management. Effective software sizing help project managers to plan and execute software projects successfully. In software business the technology is changing very quickly. It is impractical to change the measurement rules very often in accordance with the technology. Today’s software applications use different technologies, tools and several programming languages in one go. As a result software systems continue to grow in size and complexity. They are very difficult to understand, asses, and manage. A common method to understand, measure, and communicate size and productivity need to be used and established in the industry for effective project management.
Function Point Analysis (FPA) is a natural fit into this category. The FPA technique quantifies the user functions contained within software application in terms that are meaningful to the end User. A case study presented in this paper shows how FPA can be used as a common yardstick in software sizing and help establish an effective communication among different stakeholders of the software development project.

Index Terms—Measurement, performance, software development process, software size.

H. K. Raju is with the University of Mysore, India (e-mail: rajuhk2003@ yahoo.com).
Y. T. Krishnegowda is with Maharaja Institute of Technology, Mysore, India (e-mail: ytk_gowda@yahoo.com).

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Cite: H. K. Raju and Y. T. Krishnegowda, "Software Sizing and Productivity with Function Points," Lecture Notes on Software Engineering vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 204-208, 2013.