One year experience with COSMIC FFP

Vogelezang, F., Dekkers, T.

In this paper we present the results of one year experience with COSMIC Full Function
Points (CFFP). We have implemented CFFP in several organisations using our
implementation model MOUSE. Some of the organisations had experience with function
point analysis. Part of this paper will be the arguments of the choice for CFFP in relation to
the experience with function point analysis.
From the supplier’s perspective we go into detail for estimating, performance
measurement and customer confidence. Estimating from the supplier’s perspective is crucial
for making realistic proposals, performance measurement is essential to gain insigth into the
productivity of development projects. Knowing the productivity increases the predictability,
which is the main issue in customer confidence.
From the customers perspective we look at implementation and estimating issues. Our
implementation method MOUSE proved very useful for those clients that did not have
experience with a functional sizing method to implement CFFP and to prepare the
organisation to use size measurement as a method within performance measurement.
Customers with experience with a functional sizing method had very different demands.
The Rabobank has over 10 years of experience with FPA and did not want to loose all
experience figures so part of the implementation was to investigate reuse of FPA-figures. We
found a correlation between FPA and CFFP so reuse of these figures possible under certain
conditions. One other issue was benchmarking. Because of the importance of benchmarking
Rabobank participates in ISBSG/COSMIC benchmark study 2003.