An experimental study on the conversion between IFPUG and COSMIC functional size measurement units

  • Authors:

  • Juan J. Cuadrado-Gallego;Luigi Buglione;María J. Domínguez-Alda;Marian Fernández de Sevilla;J. Antonio Gutierrez de Mesa;Onur Demirors

  • Affiliations:

  • Universidad de Alcalá, Departamento de Ciencias de la Computación, 28805 Alcalá de Henares, Madrid, Spain and Ecole de Téchnologie Superieure (ETS) - Université du Qué ...;Ecole de Téchnologie Superieure (ETS) - Université du Québec í Montreal (UQAM), 1100 Rue Notre Dame Ouest, H3C 1K3 Montréal, Canada and Nexen (Engineering Group), Via R.Mo ...;Universidad de Alcalá, Departamento de Ciencias de la Computación, 28805 Alcalá de Henares, Madrid, Spain;Universidad de Alcalá, Departamento de Ciencias de la Computación, 28805 Alcalá de Henares, Madrid, Spain;Universidad de Alcalá, Departamento de Ciencias de la Computación, 28805 Alcalá de Henares, Madrid, Spain;Middle East Technical University (METU) Informatics Institute, Department of Information Systems, 06531 Ankara, Turkey

  • Venue:
  • Information and Software Technology
  • Year:
  • 2010

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Abstract

The adoption of functional size measurement (FSM) methods in software organizations is growing. In particular, special attention is being paid to the COSMIC method, because of its novelties against 1st generation FSM methods such as IFPUG FPA. One of the main problems facing organizations wanting to use COSMIC is how to properly convert the software functional size of the projects in their portfolio measured by the previously adopted FSM method to the size measured by the new method. The objective of this paper is to find a sound mathematical basis for converting an IFPUG measurement to a COSMIC measurement. In the light of previously published researches, parallel measurements were performed to establish three new datasets (respectively composed by 21, 14 and 35 data points) and verified by an expert measurer, certified on both techniques. In order to obtain a more precise solution, the search for a mathematical relationship has been run using new nonlinear equation types. Results from the analysis confirmed an approximated conversion factor of 1:1, within a range between 0.9 and 1.1, but moving from a larger number of data points analyzed then in past studies. These results can be very useful for those companies starting to use their benchmarking databases populated in IFPUG FP units to projects measured in COSMIC FP.