1. FUNCTION POINTS
WTF?

2. YOUR COMPANY IS A SOFTWARE
COMPANYIGNORANCE
STOP FEIGNING !
Is a website 'software'?
Is an iPhone or iPad app 'software'?
Is Rich Media 'software'?
YES! Absolutely! No doubt about it!
Your company definitely IS a software company
Is your company a world-class, best-in-class Software Company?
Do you know how much software you produce?
Per year? Per Month? Per Day?
How much software - exactly, specifically?
How productive are you - exactly?

3. BEST IN CLASS SOFTWARE COMPANIES
Best in Class Software Companies Have:
● higher productivity
● higher quality
Best in Class
● small project growth rates ● 28% Requirements
● 36% Design
● less overtime ● 20% Coding
● 16% Testing
● less redundancy
● more specialization Worst In Class
● 11% Requirements
● software ● 16% Design
measurement programs! ● 37% Coding
● 37% Testing

4. PRODUCTIVITY
“Goods or services per unit of labor or expenses”
Productivity = outputs/inputs
Software Productivity = functionality/hours
● Unit cost of software goes up with size
● Marginal costs for software increase with size
● There are different costs for each component

5. MEASUREMENT
● Standard units
● Houses can be measured in square feet
● Software can be measured too
● Measuring things is repeatable
○ an inch today is an inch tomorrow
● Measuring eliminates wasteful guessing
and introduces accurate and justifiable

6. LINES OF CODE
● Language dependent
● Skill dependent
● Unknown until written
● No Standards
● Function Points are better

7. FUNCTION POINTS ARE STANDARDIZED
Large user group
IFPUG - http://ifpug.org
1,200 members in 30 countries around the world
ISO Standard
IFPUG v4.3 is an ISO standard
De-facto standard
estimating packages: Cocomo II, Construx Estimate, etc.
Certified Function Point Specialist
official IFPUG certification test
Counting Practices Manual
official manual by IFPUG
FP data repositories
large repositories of data

8. HISTORY
● 1979 FPs introduced by Alan Albrecht
● 1984 First FP guidelines
● 1986 First IFPUG Board of Directors
● 1994 CPM Release 4.02003ISO standard
● 2003 ISO standard
● Adoption rate is increasing

9. OVERVIEW
● Measured from the user's perspective
● Technology-independent
● Low cost (once the system is in place)
● Repeatable
● Works well with use cases
● Answers lots of questions
● Can be automated

10. TYPES OF COUNTS
1. Development
○ all phases through deployment
○ forms a baseline
2. Enhancement
○ in production, has a baseline
○ count the size of successive enhancements
3. Application
○ in production, no baseline
○ forms a baseline

11. BENEFITS AND USES
● Accurate and justifiable estimations of
○ Cost
○ Duration
○ Staffing
● Actionable productivity metrics, including
○ Defect rate
○ Cost per function point
○ Velocity (fp/hr)
● Competitive advantages
○ Fixed prices
○ Real data and facts to drive decisions

12. BENEFITS AND USES
● software sizing ● when and what to re-engineer
● communication ● test case estimation
● over-time reduction ● productivity
● project inventory ● scope creep
● estimates ● true cost
● repeatability ● contracts
● organization portfolio

13. APPLY THE DATA
Given:
● a team of developers that average 18 FP/month (velocity)
● at an average cost of $5200/month per developer
● with requirements doc that contains 197 FP
Derive:
● months of effort
○ 197 / 18 = 11 man-months
● cost
○ 11 x 5200 = 57,200 dollars
● duration
○ 2.5 x 2.2 = 5.5 months
● minimum duration
○ .75 x 2.2 = 1.65 months
● staff
○ square root of 11 = 3.3 developers
● and many, many more magical formulas!

14. WHEN NOT TO USE
● when sizing maintenance efforts
○ detective work
○ maintenance productivity can vary
● when analyzing performance issues
○ may not be related to functionality
○ more likely about throughput & processing

15. CHALLENGES
Must be an ongoing corporate software metrics program initiative, not an
afterthought or on-the-side pet project
Must be systematized and well-managed in order to be accurate
Counting requires special training and/or special software
Usage of count data will challenge and
transform existing management practices

16. TIP OF THE ICEBERG