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Automated Functional Size Measurement: A Multiple Case Study in the Industry

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Product-Focused Software Process Improvement (PROFES 2019)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 11915))

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Abstract

Automating functional size measurement (FSM) for software applications that use specific development frameworks is a challenge for the industry. Although FSM automation brings benefits such as savings in time and costs, and better measure reliability, it is difficult to implement. In this paper, we present a multi-case study that evaluates the accuracy of an automated procedure for software size estimation in the context of a software development company. This procedure is implemented by a tool called FastWorks FPA, which obtains the IFPUG FPA function point estimation of software applications modeled in the company’s FastWorks framework. We describe the measurement process used by the tool, and discuss the results of the case studies. The accuracy (magnitude of relative error) of the measurements computed by the tool ranged between 3.9% and 12.9%, based on the total unadjusted function points. These results provide evidence for the feasibility of automating the counting process, as the tool’s estimated functional size reasonably approximates the result of specialists’ manual counting.

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Acknowledgments

This work was partially supported by the University of Costa Rica No. 834-B8-A27. We thank the Empirical Software Engineering Group at UCR.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Universidad de Costa Rica, San José, Costa Rica

    Christian Quesada-López, Alexandra Martínez, Marcelo Jenkins & Luis Carlos Salas

  2. Grupo Asesor en Informática, San José, Costa Rica

    Luis Carlos Salas & Juan Carlos Gómez

Authors
  1. Christian Quesada-López
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  2. Alexandra Martínez
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  3. Marcelo Jenkins
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  4. Luis Carlos Salas
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  5. Juan Carlos Gómez
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Correspondence to Christian Quesada-López .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain

    Xavier Franch

  2. University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

    Tomi Männistö

  3. Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering, Kaiserslautern, Germany

    Silverio Martínez-Fernández

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Quesada-López, C., Martínez, A., Jenkins, M., Salas, L.C., Gómez, J.C. (2019). Automated Functional Size Measurement: A Multiple Case Study in the Industry. In: Franch, X., Männistö, T., Martínez-Fernández, S. (eds) Product-Focused Software Process Improvement. PROFES 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11915. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35333-9_19

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35333-9_19

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-35332-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-35333-9

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