M. Maya

A sizing measure for adaptive maintenance work products

A requirement for productivity models and productivity analysis is the ability to define a sizing technique of the product of a work process. There is currently a lack of measurement techniques for sizing the work product of software maintenance activities. This paper reports on research work carried out to define a sizing technique for the work product of the maintenance activities of the adaptive category. The proposed sizing technique is based on an extension to the Function Points technique which has been designed to measure the functional size of software applications from a users perspective. However, it has been used mostly to measure either medium or large development or enhancement projects. An extended version of Function Points is proposed to take into account a finer level of granularity congruent with the small maintenance work products. This extension provides the ability to adequately size products that would have been previously bundled within the same size interval when using the conventional technique. This extension was field tested in an organization over a four-year period and preliminary results are discussed.

Measuring the size of small functional enhancements to software

A requirement for productivity models and productivity analysis is to know the size of the product, or the output, of a work process. In software engineering, the product is the software itself. Function Points Analysis (FPA) has been designed to measure the functional size of software applications from a user’s perspective. While it is being used extensively to measure either medium or large software development or enhancement projects, it has not been used to measure very small functional enhancements: its current measurement structure does not allow it to discriminate small size increments. This paper describes an extended version of FPA which is proposed to address this measurement issue of lack of sensitivity to small size changes. It also presents the design and the results of an empirical study carried out using this extended version.