Studies in four different organizations developing different types of software show conclusively that sizes of sprints or iterations measured using standardized COSMIC Function Points correlate much better with effort than Story Points do. This means that standardized size measurements are a better predictor for estimating Agile activities than the commonly used Story Points.

The COSMIC Functional Size Measurement method is an ISO standard way of measuring a size of software functional requirements based on fundamental software engineering principle. Hence the measured sizes are independent of the development method or technology used, the developer skills, etc. Agile User Stories can be measured in units of COSMIC Function Points as well as any aggregations of Stories, i.e. sprints or iterations, releases and whole systems. In contrast, Story Points have only meaning within an individual team; they are typically used as a means for estimating team effort for User Stories and sprints, but cannot be used reliably for measuring or tracking performance across teams or for estimating effort at any higher levels of aggregation.




Agile can measure their backlog and estimate their sprint planning using COSMIC Function Points instead of Story Points without the need to change any ceremonies at the team level or at any higher level.

Download the summary report ‘Experience of using COSMIC Function Points in Agile projects’ showing the study findings.