Over the last few weeks I have received much more requests than usual from fellow metrics professionals if I can provide a copy of an article I have written. I have recently discovered that LinkedIn now has the possibility to add publications to my profile. So when I received a request for a copy of the article
that I wrote, together with Theo Prins, for the SMEF 2007 conference, I put that copy on my LinkedIn profile. And it has been downloaded more than a dozen times already. Apparently it is a topic of interest. Why?
This paper has been the basis for a chapter on the Advanced & Related Topics document that is part of the core set of documents describing the COSMIC method. In the COSMIC document only the resulting approximate methods are described. The paper contains data on how we worked with the different methods and with what success.
Since these approximate methods were conceived by commercial companies they were only investigated to the point that we could prove to ourselves and to the customers where we used it that it worked. It is good to see that the subject is now picked up by several university groups for more thorough theoretical research. It is good, because for commercial practice you cannot always wait with cost estimation until the documentation is good enough for a detailed COSMIC analysis. But since COSMIC measurements have no fixed upper limit on the size of functional processes, finding a good approximate method is not as easy as it is in first-generation functional sizing methods.
Within the COSMIC organisation there is also attention for this subject. The intention is to turn the chapter of the Advanced & Related Topics document into a full guide on approximate COSMIC. If you have other approaches to approximate COSMIC or have data to prove or disprove elements that are covered in our paper, please send them to me or to Roberto Meli, who is chairing the working group on approximate COSMIC.
No comments:
Post a Comment