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Functional size is among the few software size measures for which well-structured and standardized methods exists for its measurement. Although Functional Size Measurement(FSM) methods have gone a long way, one ongoing criticism on FSM methods is the discrepancies in the measurement results of the same software obtained by different measures. In this thesis study the sources of discrepancies that involve the functional properties of measurands and constructs of the FSM method models are investigated in two exploratory case studies. In the light of the findings, a software functionality model for functional size measurement is proposed. The model is founded on a characterization of software functionality from a requirements engineering point of view and it aims is to facilitate reliable size measurements on the basis of formalized concepts and rules. Two case studies are conducted in order to evaluate the applicability of the model and validate its effectiveness.

This thesis study aims to examine the conceptual and theoretical differences of Functional Size Measurement (FSM) methods, to identify the improvement opportunities of these methods and to develop a new FSM method. A comprehensive literature review is performed and two multiple-case studies are conducted as a research strategy. In the light of the results obtained, some improvement suggestions on two of the most challenging improvement opportunities identified for FSM methods are made &ndash / improvement opportunities which are related to the conceptual and theoretical basis of FSM and the extension of the applicability of these methods to different software functional domain types. The work behind these suggestions involves the critical examination of the concepts &ldquo / functionality&rdquo / and &ldquo / functional size&rdquo / and the depiction of &ldquo / types of functionality&rdquo / considering the components of software architecture and the forms of information processing logic performed in different software functional domain types. Based on the suggestions made, a new FSM method, called ARCHItectural DIMensions Based FSM (ARCHI-DIM) is developed conforming to the ISO/IEC 14143-1 standard. A third multiple-case study is conducted in order to evaluate the new method and to identify future directions for FSM methods.

Estimation and measurement of the size of software is crucial for project management activities. Functional size measurement is one of the most frequently used methods to measure size of software and COSMIC is one of the popular methods for functional size measurement. Although precise size measurement is critical, the results may differ because of the errors made in the measurement process. The erroneous measurement results cause lack of confidence for the methods as well as reliability problems for effort and cost estimations. This research proposes an error prevention model for COSMIC Functional Size Measurement method to increase the reliability of the measurements. The prevention model defines data movement patterns for different types of the functional processes and a cardinality table to prevent errors. We validated the prevention model with two different case studies and observed that it can decrease errors up to 90% in our case studies.

The cost and effort estimation of projects depend on software size. A software product size is needed at as early a phase of the project as possible. Conventional Early Functional Size Estimation methods generate size at the early phase but result in subjectivity and unrepeatability due to manual calculation. On the other hand, automated Functional Size Measurement calculation approaches require constructs which are available in considerably late software development phases. In this study we developed an approach called e-Cosmic to calculate and automate the functional size measurement based on the business processes. Functions and input and output relationship types of each function are identified in the business process model. The size of each relationship type is determined by assigning appropriate data movements based on the COSMIC Measurement Manual. Then, relationship type size is aggregated to produce the size of each function. The size of the software product is the sum of the size of these functions. Automation of this process based on business process model is performed by developing a script in the ARIS tool concept. Three case studies were conducted to validate the proposed functional size estimation method (e-Cosmic). The size of the products in the case studies are measured manually with COSMIC FSM (Abran et al, 2007) as well as using a conventional early estimation method, called Early and Quick COSMIC FFP. We compared the results of different approaches and discussed the usability of e-Cosmic based on the findings.

Kyoto University (京都大学) / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(工学) / 甲第16887号 / 工博第3608号 / 新制||工||1545(附属図書館) / 29562 / 京都大学大学院工学研究科化学工学専攻 / (主査)教授 松坂 修二, 教授 宮原 稔, 教授 大嶋 正裕 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当

High performance cutting tools are essential in many industry areas. Cemented carbides (WC-Co) are common materials used for these applications due to the excellent mechanical properties. The mechanical properties of the material are manly dependent on the WC grain size distribution.To be able to tailor the material properties it is important to be able to characterize and control the WC grain size.In this study a quantitative method for WC grain size distribution measurements has been developed using the automated electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) technique. The EBSD system was optimized for a fast and accurate measurement. Using the method approximately 2000-3000 WC grains can be measured in approximately 25 minutes. This will give reliable statistics and information about the material.The method was used to compare materials produced with three different milling methods; traditional 30l ball mill, method A and B. Two WC raw materials with different initial particle sizes, one coarser and one finer, was milled aiming for similar grain sizes in the sintered structure. The results showed some tendency for a larger fraction of large grains in the materials produced using the ball mill compared to the materials produced with method A and B. The difference between the milling methods was larger using a raw material with a coarser initial particle size.The developed quantitative method was successfully used to compare grain size distributions of different materials in a fast and quantitative way. The differences between the materials were small and materials with similar grain size distribution and mechanical properties could be produced using both the traditional ball mill method and method A and B.

Software size measurement provides a basis for software project management and plays an important role for its activities such as project management estimations, process benchmarking, and quality control. As size can be measured with functional size measurement (FSM) methods in the early phases of the software projects, functionality is one of the most frequently used metric. On the other hand, FSMs are being criticized by being subjective. The main aim of this thesis is increasing the accuracy of the measurements, by decreasing the number of defects concerning FSMs that are measured by COSMIC FSM method. For this purpose, an approach that allows detecting defects of FSMs automatically is developed. During the development of the approach, first of all error classifications are established. To detect defects of COSMIC FSMs automatically, COSMIC FSM Defect Detection Approach (DDA) is proposed. Later, based on the proposed approach, COSMIC FSM DDT (DDT) is developed.

Software size estimation/measurement has been the objective of a lot of research in the software engineering community due to the need of reliable size estimates. FSM Methods have become widely used in software project management to measure the functional size of software since its first publication, late 1970s. Although all FSM methods measure the functional size by quantifying the FURs, each method defined its own measurement process and metric. Therefore, a piece of software has several functional sizes when measured by different methods. In order to be able to compare functional sizes of software products measured by different methods, we need to convert them to each other. In this thesis study, the similarities and differences between four FSM methods, IFPUG FPA, Mark II FPA, COSMIC FFP and ARCHI DIM FSM are investigated and the common core concepts are presented. Accordingly a unification model of the measurement process of all four methods is proposed. The main objective of this model is to measure the functional size of a software system by applying all four methods simultaneously, using a single source of data. In order to have an infrastructure to validate the unification model by conducting empirical studies, a software tool is designed and implemented based on the unification model. Two empirical studies are conducted by utilizing the data of a real project to evaluate both the unification model proposed and the developed tool and the measurement results are discussed.

In this study, we identified one of the reasons of the low correlation between functional size and development effort which is overlooking the similarity of the functions during the mapping of the functional size and development effort. We developed a methodology (SiRFuS) that is based on the idea of the reuse of the similar functions internally to provide high correlation between functional size and development effort. The method is developed for the identification of the similar functions based on the method of Santillo and Abran. Similarity percentages among the functional processes and Similarity Reflective Functional Sizes are computed to attain adjusted functional sizes. The similarity reflective functional sizes were named as Discrete Similarity Reflective Functional Size and Continuous Similarity Reflective Functional Size based on the characteristics of the adjusted functional sizes. The SiRFuS method consists of three stages: measurement of the software product with COSMIC Functional Size Measurement (FSM) method / identification of the functional similarities bases on the measurement results and calculation of the similarity reflective functional sizes. In order to facilitate the detection of similar functions, calculation of the percentage of the similarities and similarity reflective functional sizes / a software tool is developed based on the SiRFuS method. Two case studies were performed in order to identify the improvement opportunities and evaluate the applicability of the method and the tool.