Software Function, Source Lines of Code, and Development Effort Prediction: A Software Science Validation

One of the most important problems faced by software developers and users is the prediction of the size of a programming system and its development effort. As an alternative to "size," one might deal with a measure of the "function" that the software is to perform. Albrecht [1] h...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE transactions on software engineering Vol. SE-9; no. 6; pp. 639 - 648
Main Authors: Albrecht, A.J., Gaffney, J.E.
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: New York, NY IEEE 01.11.1983
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
IEEE Computer Society
Subjects:
Application software
Applied sciences
Code reuse
Computer science; control theory; systems
Cost analysis
Cost estimates
Cost estimating
Development
Estimates
Exact sciences and technology
function points
Information systems
Linguistics
Performance evaluation
Projects
Science
Size measurement
Software
Software design
Software engineering
software linguistics
Software measurement
Software performance
State estimation
Program design
ISSN:0098-5589, 1939-3520
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:One of the most important problems faced by software developers and users is the prediction of the size of a programming system and its development effort. As an alternative to "size," one might deal with a measure of the "function" that the software is to perform. Albrecht [1] has developed a methodology to estimate the amount of the "function" the software is to perform, in terms of the data it is to use (absorb) and to generate (produce). The "function" is quantified as "function points," essentially, a weighted sum of the numbers of "inputs," "outputs,"master files," and "inquiries" provided to, or generated by, the software. This paper demonstrates the equivalence between Albrecht's external input/output data flow representative of a program (the "function points" metric) and Halstead's [2] "software science" or "software linguistics" model of a program as well as the "soft content" variation of Halstead's model suggested by Gaffney [7].
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ISSN:0098-5589
1939-3520
DOI:10.1109/TSE.1983.235271