| Author | Message | ||
     Abinash Sahoo |
Hello Everyone, I need some help and expert guidance on setting up a process to derive costs of development with FP as a driving factor. We are required to be able to derive development costs based on FP. Requirements of customers include , "Functional Requirements", "Non-Functional requirements" as well as "Test Only" requirements. The CPM v4.2.1 , "Code Data" chapter starts with discussing functional and non-functional requirements and the document “A Framework for Functional Sizing” has been specifically highlighted. I donot have access to this document so can someone throw some light on this. Does this document help in identifying and measuring non functional requirements as well? something on the lines of counting FP for FUR? If so, may I request someone to please attach the document here which I can use for reference. Apart from this, I would be grateful, if someone can provide some other reference material, (books or links ) which provide guidance to count several non functional requirements and derive complete costs. Apart from this discussion over FUR and NFR, another pain area that we face is counting different FUR coming in differnent Sprints , delivered with different OOD , but goes live on single date. We follow Agile delivery model and each release is spread across 2-3 sprints, each sprint of 2 weeks. In every release, we definitely have more than one FUR, which require changes in a single EP, but the user requires them to be delivered in different sprints. This decision of different OOD is driven by the testing priority of the requirements and so requirements requiring more testing are dropped to E2E testing first and others later. Now since IFPUG says that the FP count should be made at a release level, we are supposed to count the affected EP in above case only once. Where as design and development for both the requirements impacting the EP are done separately and hence the costs incurred are not common. Even if they were to be common to some extent, some of the individuals is surely greater than the whole. In such scenarios of deriving costs from FP, how do we consider such multiple requirements in FP count and cost. ( lastly I must mention , I have gone through the several discussions on this BB on product size vs project size, and hence I just wanted to highlight my concerns over the development costs only. Other fixed project costs will surely have to be taken care of separately ) Thanks & Regards, Abinash. | ||
| Abinash Sahoo |
Request the Experienced experts on this forum to please help with their views and suggestions. Thanks & Regards, Abinash. | ||
| Charley Tichenor |
Hi Abinash -- I can offer you a quick idea to get started. I am sure you want to set up a detailed program, but it will take some time and you may need to complete a number of projects before you settle in on metrics or results you are comfortable with. What you might think about in the mean time is to buy an estimation tool. Some that come to mind are KnowledgePlan, SLIM, SEER-SEM, COST Xpert, and others. These have databases of numerous successful projects, with work breakdown structures already programmed and these can give you good estimates basically right away (after taking the training and doing the tool calibration). Several years down the road you will have collected your own data and will have good stuff. However, in the mean time one of these tools might help you quite a lot and very quickly, and (speaking from experience!) one can learn a lot about software cost estimating by using one of them. Charley | ||
| Ashok Kumar Username: Ak_lshotmailcom Post Number: 76 Registered: 11-2005 |
For using Estimation Tools, you can have a look at RASS Estimate at www.rasstools.com Most of the organisations have atleast cost data on project. Also for several know environments, Function Points per person-month productivities are also available. You can use your cost data to derive what productivities gives you the same cost. You can use these derived productivities as a starting point. later you can implement your own ways of calculating productivities using your own data. Ashok Ashok Creator of RASS Estimate www.rasstools.com |
