The use of functional size as a measure to make like-for-like comparisons between different software development or maintenance contracts has been common practice in administrative software for decades. In real-time software this practice is now starting to develop. Why did it take the real-time software community so long to catch up?
One of the reasons that contracting, benchmarking and improvement programs in real-time software did not make use of functional size as an equalizing unit is because a lot of the first generation functional size measurement methods were difficult to implement in the real-time software environment.
Most of these methods largely rely on the presence of data structures in the software, while transactions are the dominant characteristic of real-time software. But the second generation functional size measurement methods is designed to measure software, regardless of whether it is dominated by data or transactions, whether it is a micro service, a component, or a full software system, or whatever distinction you may use. This means that this second generation of functional size can be used for real-time software as a basis for contracting, benchmarking and improvement programs. Now real-time software development and maintenance contracts can be compared like-for-like.
You don't have to be the launching customer
When I speak to people about benchmarking real-time contracts, I often encounter the feeling that they are afraid to be the launching customer for a new development. I can say that you are not. From my own practice I know a lot of these like-for-like comparisons are being made for at least a decade. Most of them I am not allowed to disclose. The COSMIC community has now compiled a document with a number of public examples from aerospace and avionics, automotive, telecom and security software that have used functional size succesfully to make like-for-like comparisons.
I would like to thank the people from Renault, Turkcell, China Mobile, Airbus, BAE Systems, EXFO, Nokia, NTT and Alcatel-Lucent to share their experience. I hope that the real-time community will benefit from their experience.
You can download the experience report for free from the COSMIC website https://cosmic-sizing.org/publications/using-cosmic-for-real-time-software/
1 comment:
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