A revised web objects method to estimate web application development effort

We present a study of the effectiveness of estimating web application development effort using Function Points and Web Objects methods, and a method we propose - the Revised Web Objects (RWO). RWO is an upgrading of WO method, aimed to account for new web development styles and technologies. It also introduces an up-front classification of web applications according to their size, scope and technology, to further refine their effort estimation. These methods were applied to a data-set of 24 projects obtained by Datasiel spa, a mid-sized Italian company, focused on web application projects, showing that RWO performs statistically better than WO, and roughly in the same way as FP.