Experience® Service - 4SumPartners

Experience® Service is a web-based software service for estimating and measuring IT software projects using function points as a base of measurement. The service application is a Project Estimation and Measurement System (PEMS). With it, the users are capable to measure the functional size of a software application, estimate the effort and cost of the project and collect the project data into the Experience® database.

Service is designed to support several estimation methods. Current version supports functional sizing methods FiSMA, NESMA and IFPUG. Other software size measurement approaches will be implemented in the future. The other supported estimation methods include determining delivery rate, analyzing impact of reuse and analyzing project circumstances. The product supports northernSCOPE™ concept.

List of Features

The Experience® Service provides, but is not limited to the next attractive features:

PROCESS ORIENTATION: Project estimation and measurement in Experience® supports all northernSCOPE™ development life-cycle processes. Menu structure of the service guides the user through the processes from initiating and early estimating to the closing the project, and also further to benchmarking.
SUPPORT FOR ALTERNATIVE ESTIMATION METHODS: FiSMA, NESMA and IFPUG for functional size measurement, FiSMA RMM for reuse analysis, several datasets for determining delivery rate (h/fp) and, ND21 and MT22 for project situation analysis.
EXPERIENCE DRIVEN ESTIMATION: Experience® has several analogy data sets available for determining project delivery rate including Experience® and ISBSG repositories.
SIMPLIFIED FIRST ESTIMATE APPROACH: The user may also enter values of functional size, reuse rate, delivery rate and project situation multiplier to estimate the project effort and cost.
CONTROLLING SCOPE CREEP: Managing changes in a systematic way through audit trail and comparison of sequential versions of the estimate.
APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT LIFE-CYCLE COVERAGE: Experience® has development and maintenance specific development life-cycle activity models.
EARNED CUSTOMER VALUE: Mapping the status of development life-cycle activities of functional component with measured size reveals the real progress rate measured in the terms of delivered user functionality.
SUPPORTING PROJECT AND APPLICATION CLASSIFICATION: The users can classify their projects and application with variety of classifiers. The users can enter their own classifier values if value items are not available in the classification parameters.
MANAGING PROJECT PORTFOLIO: Support for sub-project estimation, each Experience® project consists of single application to be measured. Projects may be grouped into programs and portfolios.
EASINESS OF COLLECTING PROJECT DATA: After estimating and managing project changes, you only need to enter the actual effort and release your project.
OPTION FOR COMPANY SPECIFIC DATA COLLECTION: Collected data may be extracted into a company specific analogy data set, which will be available only for the users of the company.
BENCHMARKING: After releasing her/his project and receiving extended, free of charge access time to the service, the user may compare projects’ performance with industry data.
SUPPORTING CONTINUOUS PROCESS IMPROVEMENT: Systematic review and benchmarking of the project features and productivity factors helps the user to prioritize potential process improvement activities effectively.

Estimation and measurement methods

Methods included:

A function point is a unit of measurement to express the amount of business functionality an information system provides to a user. Function points are measured by using functional size measurement methods. Experience® Service supports:
- Full support for FiSMA 1.1 method, which is published as ISO/IEC 29881:2010 standard. The method was developed and is maintained by the Finnish Software Measurement Association.
- Large support for NESMA method, which is published as ISO/IEC 24570 standard. The method was developed and is maintained by the Netherlands Software Metrics users Association.
- Large support for IFPUG method, which is published as ISO/IEC 20926 standard. The method was developed and is maintained by the International Function Point Users Group.
- Partial support for other ISO standard FSM methods (COSMIC, MK 2), if aided by external counting.

Impact of reuse for a software development project is dependent on the amount of available, reusable software components, and amount of requests to develop reusable components. The impact of reuse is determined using FiSMA Reuse Measurement Method (RMM), whenever the functionality of the target application is known. Alternatively the user may enter a pre-determined application-level reuse multiplier from an external calculation.
Project delivery rate (PDR) : the Experience® Service supports survey and determination of project delivery rate (h/fp) using industrial project data from Experience® and ISBSG repositories. The analogy data points are illustrated by easy to read graphical charts. Contents and demographics of data are discussed in more detail in the next chapter.
Project situation analysis: FiSMA ND21 method is applicable for any new development project and consists of 21 productivity factors related to project circumstances. It can be used when developing new software or enhancing existing functionality. FiSMA MT22 method with its 22 productivity factors is applicable for annual maintenance and support. It can be used together with corrective or modifying maintenance when no new functionality is delivered. For the first estimate the user may alternatively enter a pre-determined value from external analysis.

Project data for knowledge management

High quality project history data can be used effectively for estimating and process improvement purposes. These are the main areas of knowledge management supported by Experience® Service. A user can acquire access to several experience datasets. These analogy datasets included are described in the table below.

Database	Description	Number of projects
Company specific	Collection of company’s own projects	–
Experience®	All projects and maintenance items from Experience® repository	1000+
ISBSG D&E	All development and enhancements projects from ISBSG repository measured by other FSM methods than COSMIC	4000+
ISBSG COSMIC	All development and enhancements projects from ISBSG repository measured by COSMIC	400+
ISBSG M&S	All maintenance and support applications from ISBSG repository	500+
External source	User enters the value based on an external repository or literature	–

Selection of the dataset is highest level decision made by the user. Within the dataset the user may specify more detailed selection criteria to find the most applicable subset of comparative project data points. S/he can choose in maximum three values for each of four basic classifiers: