The Warehouse Software Portfolio A Case Study in Functional Size Measurement

The management of software cost, development effort and project planning are key aspects of software development. Software size is a critical element in these measurement requirements. Various approaches for the measurement of software size have been formulated, among others the number of lines of source code. Functional size measurement methods have been proposed to overcome some of the deficiencies of approaches based on source code. It is the goal of these methods to measure the functionality of the software, independent of its implementation. We present here a case study that demonstrates the application of five current functional size measurement methods. The case in this study is formed by the functional user requirements for a portfolio of related applications for the management of warehouses. For each of the five methods, we present an evaluation of these functional user requirements. The selected functional size measurement methods are IFPUG Function Point Analysis, release 4.0 and 4.1, Mark II Function Point Analysis, and the Full Function Points approach, version 1.0 and 2.0. The study illustrates the core concepts common to these methods and the differences in their detailed measurement processes.