Mapping the OO-Jacobson Approach to Function Point Analysis

Abstract

The Function Point software measure does not require the use of a particular development technique. However, the high-level concepts of object-oriented development methods cannot be mapped directly to the concepts of Function Point Analysis. In order to apply this software measure early in the development process, the object-oriented concepts corresponding to transactional and data function types have to be determined.Object-oriented methods differ, especially in their early development phases. The Object-Oriented Software Engineering method of Jacobson et al. is based on so-called use cases. The viewpoint of this method is similar to Function Point Analysis in the sense that it concentrates on the application's functionality from the user's perspective.The OO-Jacobson approach identifies the functionality of an application with the requirements use case model. Data types are described with a domain or analysis object model on the requirements level. Our work proposes rules to map these models to the Function Point counting procedures. With the proposed rules, it is possible to count software developed with the OO-Jacobson method. Experimental counts have been conducted for three industry projects.