Guidance on how to measure
UML / Use Case documentation
The Nesma standard for function point analysis can be used to measure all kinds of functional user requirements, regardless of the way these are technically implemented. However, the basis is usually formed by the documentation that is available for the measurement. Many times, measurement specialists struggle with the documentation they receive as input for their measurement as they are not always able to map Nesma counting guidelines to the way the functional user requirements are described. Although the Nesma counting guidelines are described in a clear and general way, the mapping to the documentation available is sometimes hard. To give some guidance in these matters, Nesma has published a number of guides that should help the measurement specialists to map the functional requirements described in the documentation to the Nesma counting guidelines and vice versa.
More objective than UCP
One of the documents that Nesma provides is the guideline FPA applied to UML/Usecase documentation. Many organizations make the mistake to discard the Nesma method for these types of documentation, stating that it is ‘impossible’. They even sometimes revert to non-standardized methods, like the highly subjective Usecase points method (UCP). Although this seems like a good way to go (the UCP method is relatively easy to apply, even by people that are not really knowledgeable about software measurement), the UCP method is ultimately very subjective and the results are usually rather useless in the estimation or benchmarking process.
Other guidance on applying FPA
Other specific guides for the application of the Nesma method are:
All these guides can be obtained for a modest fee (or for free by certain member types).