Functional Requirement Improvements through Size Measurement: A Case Study with Inexperienced Measurers

This paper reports on a research project investigating the contribution of functional size measurers to finding defects in requirements. It describes an experiment where the same requirements document was inspected by a number of inspectors, as well as by a number of measurers. All participants had limited experience in both inspecting and measuring. The number and types of defects found by the two groups are compared and discussed. For this experiment, the measurers used COSMIC – ISO 19761 to measure functional size and to find defects. Results show an increase in defect identification when both inspection and functional size measurement are used to find and report defects.