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Concept
Software sizing
Summary
Software sizing or software size estimation is an activity in software engineering that is used to determine or estimate the size of a software application or component in order to be able to implement other software project management activities (such as estimating or tracking). Size is an inherent characteristic of a piece of software just like weight is an inherent characteristic of a tangible material.
Software sizing is different from software effort estimation. Sizing estimates the probable size of a piece of software while effort estimation predicts the effort needed to build it. The relationship between the size of software and the effort required to produce it is called productivity.
For example, if a software engineer has built a small web-based calculator application, we can say that the project effort was 280 man-hours. However, this does not give any information about the size of the software product itself. Conversely, we can say that the application size is 5,000 LOCs (Lines Of Code), or 30 FPs (Function Points) without identifying the project effort required to produce it.
Historically, the most common software sizing methodology has been counting the lines of code written in the application source. Another approach is to do Functional Size Measurement, to express the functionality size as a number by performing function point analysis. The original sizing method is the IFPUG. The IFPUG FPA functional sizing method (FSM) has been used successfully - despite being less accurate in estimating complex algorithms and being relatively more difficult to use than estimating lines of code. Adaptations of the original Functional Size Measurement methodology have emerged, and these standards are: COSMIC Function Points, Mk II Function Points, Nesma Function Points, and FiSMA Function Points. Other variants of these standards include Object-Oriented Function Points (OOFP) and newer variants as Weighted Micro Function Points, which factor algorithmic and control-flow complexity.
Official source
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