Function Points

David Bovill david at openpartnership.net
Wed May 9 12:04:36 EDT 2007


I have not looked at Function Point Analysis before - but reading up on it
makes doesn't leave a good taste. Research shows that a huge percentage of
initial requirements (ie function points) never reach the final product -
from memory and the published research I read on this last year this was
well over 65% for projects of 5 months duration and over!

And perhaps more to the point:  Am I looking for a Holy Grail in trying
> to find an objective measurement for projects which don't have any code
> yet?


Sounds interesting Richard - would love to know more...  I have been looking
hard for this Holy Grail perhaps from a different perspective of games and
collaborative publishing.

For project management applications I'd think of going more in the direction
of as Chipp says "agile development" with an emphasis on light weight
documentation - and go for Unit Tests perhaps as any measure of project
complexity? I have used Unit Tests myself in Rev - but I don't think the
benefits that they have for other language type projects correspond....

I think what I am trying to say is that the long term forward planing is all
but impossible and the real advantage of any form of project planning
documentation is with regard to a customer feedback cycle designed to keep
things on track? The biggest problem is trying to convince the customer that
forward planning does not work so well, and to pay for a development process
that they steer, rather than a hypothetical but detailed "plan" - Rev and
other Agile Tools have the advantage here in that results can be made
visible right from the word go.

The only form of quantifying I have found useful are Sprint Back Catalogues
- which basically keep a daily cumulative graph of time to completion to the
end of the next sprint cycle.

As a counter to all this Agile development nonsense I came across this ditty
a while back :)

Imagine (with apologies to John Lennon)

Imagine there's no requirements. It's easy if you try
Just a bunch of coders, reachin' for the sky
Imagine all the people, coding for today
Imagine there's no schedules. It isn't hard to do
No silly project deadlines, no one supervising you
Imagine all the people, coding hand in hand

You may say I'm an extremer but I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us and make coding lots more fun.

Imagine oral documentation. I wonder if you can
No need for UML diagrams. Just words passed, man to man
Imagine just refactoring, playing in the sand

You may say I'm an extremer, but I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us and make coding lots more fun.

Taken from Stephens, D. Rosenberg. Extreme Programming Refactored

But apart from saying I don't think it is possible - am I missing the point?



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