Function Points

[Richard Gaskin]

Thanks for the input, Chipp and David.

I think David summed it up well here:
> I have not looked at Function Point Analysis before - but reading up on it
> makes doesn't leave a good taste.

For me this is more of a thought experiment than an immediate need, as I 
have a small number of multi-year projects to keep me busy enough to not 
need to worry about estimating new projects for a while.

But since most of my works spans multiple versions of products, I've 
been fleshing out some internal tools for code base analysis, with two 
goals in mind:  first, that they be usable enough to share with clients, 
and then if time permits that they become usable enough to share with 
the rest of the Rev community.

While I was working on tools for the development phase, my reading led 
me down the road of pre-development.   But my reading concurs with 
what's been discussed here:  there's just too much variance at the 
outset of a project to reliably quantify it through any semi-automated 
method.

I stumbled across this estimating tool at Construx.com, Steve 
McConnell's company:
<http://construx.com/Page.aspx?nid=68>

Haven't spent much time with it, but it looks like an interesting 
starting point for working in lower-level languages.

For the moment, I have enough to keep me busy writing bug-tracking and 
code base analysis tools that if there's no slam-dunk for automating 
parts of the estimating process I'll gladly leave well enough alone. :)

-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Media Corporation
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  Ambassador at FourthWorld.com       http://www.FourthWorld.com