By:
Wayne Wild
on Tuesday, October 27, 2009,
under
Function Point Analysis
I spoke at the 4th Annual International Software Measurement and
Analysis Conference held in Chicago Sept. 13-16th. This
conference is sponsored by the International Function Point User's
Group (IFPUG). It included two days of workshops followed by two
days of presentations.
The workshops are geared toward assisting practitioners prepare
for the Certified Function Point Specialist or the Certified
Software Measurement Specialist exams.
The two days of presentations were divided into three tracks:
Function Points, Estimation & Metrics, and Management &
Issues.
Since joining IFPUG in 2007 and later becoming a certified
function point specialist, this is the first annual conference that
I was able to attended. The three takeaways, for me, from this
year's conference were:
- I was able to learn how leader's in the industry are applying
the counting practice in areas of new technology.
- I was able to meet other counting practitioners and share
counting experiences during networking breaks.
- It provided me an opportunity to share the StoneHenge FPA
program success story and add to the FPA body of knowledge.
If you are passionate about learning to accurately size software
applications, I strongly recommend you join IFPUG, become a
certified counter and attending an ISMA conference.
Three presentations from this year's conference I found very
enlightening:
"Applying Function Points Within a SOA
Environment", Jeffery Lindskoog, EDS -- This presentation
illustrated a technique to applying FPA to size the Integration
Service Layer in a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)
environment.
"How Consistent is Function Point Counting?",
Ian Brown, Terry Vogt, Kim Ovuka, Booz Allen Hamilton -- The goal
of this session was to collect additional scientific data to answer
this question. Facilitators collected demographic information about
each participant. Then each participant was asked to perform a
function point count based on the same case study documentation.
The results will be published by IFPUG once enough data has been
collected.
"How Many FPs Is It?", Dr. Luca Santillo, Agile
Metrics -- This was a review of estimation techniques available for
early and quick project sizing, before requirements are fully
defined or documented.
My presentation was entitled, "Ten Steps to Starting a
Successful FPA Program." You may view here as a white paper and as a slideshow.