Methods of functional measurement of software

Abstract

Nowadays software development is the most expensive element of a projects in the information technology sector. Many software projects fail due to budget overruns, late delivery or incorrectly planned forecasts. Software products could be manufactured if they have such frameworks that the budget can be constrained. Before developing a software product, it is important to estimate the cost of software development. The estimation of software costs - the so-called software cost estimation model should predict the effort that is indispensable for building a software system. In the last 40 years, many estimation models have been composed for the following aspects: budgeting, risk analysis, project planning and control, and investment analysis for software improvements. Software provides the IT landscape for business processes and enables the reusability of the software. There are numerous ways of measuring the functional size of the software: COCOMO (Constructive Cost Model) and ESTIMACS based on the parameters of implementation ability, flexibility and traceability as well as techniques for software cost estimation. Index terms - Function points (FP), Cosmic, SLOC (Lines of code), Use Case Points (UCP) etc.