Software Effort Estimation Using Sizing Method

Abstract

Estimation models in software engineering are used to predict some important attributes of future entities such as development effort, software reliability and programmer‟s productivity among these models, those estimating software efforts have motivated considerable research in recent years. The size of the task of designing and developing a business computerized information system is determined by the product of three factors [11]. The information processing size, technical complexity factor, Environmental factors. The first two of these factors are intrinsic to the size of the system in the sense that they result directly from the requirements for the system to be delivered to the user and the for estimation purpose the third group of environmental factors are taken into account. Allan Albrecht has described a method known as “Function Point Analysis” [FPA], for determining the relative size of a system based on these first two factors [2]-[5] that said above. Function Point, is a unit of measuring the size of a software application, which does not use lines-of-code approach. The relative measure of the function values are delivered to the user based on function and based on the end users of the system. In addition to measuring the output, FPA is extremely useful in estimating projects, managing change of scope, measuring productivity, and communicating functional requirements [7]. In this paper, it stretches out the basis of the estimation process and a brief literature study on the Function point analysis method and its impact, in the field of Software effort estimation process.