Function Points

A function point is a unit of measurement to express the amount of business functionality an information system provides to a user.

Function Point Analysis:

The method of measuring the size of an information system and expressing it in a number of function points is called function point analysis (FPA). A function point analysis expresses the functional size of an information system in a number of function points (for example: the size of a system is 314 FPs). There are many uses and benefits of function points & the functional size may be used as input into many projects and organization decisions, some of the aspects are shown below:

• budget for application development or enhancement costs.
• budget for the annual maintenance costs of the application portfolio.
• project productivity after completion of the project.
• size of the software for cost estimation.

Criticism of Function Points:

Function points have been criticized as adding little value relative to the cost and complexity of the effort, the effect on this is very marginal error reduction. because much of the variance in software cost estimates are not considered like business changes, scope changes, unplanned resource constraints or reprioritizations, and there may be many more reasons. Also, if the measurement is used for the decision of whether to invest in the software, then a given measurement effort, it is argued, is more valuable if it is applied to measure benefits than costs

Related Topics:

• mutation testing
• Inspection
• static testing
• fault injection
• code coverage