I have not looked at Function Point Analysis before - but reading up on it makes doesn't leave a good taste. Research shows that a huge percentage of initial requirements (ie function points) never reach the final product - from memory and the published research I read on this last year this was well over 65% for projects of 5 months duration and over!
And perhaps more to the point: Am I looking for a Holy Grail in trying
to find an objective measurement for projects which don't have any code yet?
Sounds interesting Richard - would love to know more... I have been looking hard for this Holy Grail perhaps from a different perspective of games and collaborative publishing. For project management applications I'd think of going more in the direction of as Chipp says "agile development" with an emphasis on light weight documentation - and go for Unit Tests perhaps as any measure of project complexity? I have used Unit Tests myself in Rev - but I don't think the benefits that they have for other language type projects correspond.... I think what I am trying to say is that the long term forward planing is all but impossible and the real advantage of any form of project planning documentation is with regard to a customer feedback cycle designed to keep things on track? The biggest problem is trying to convince the customer that forward planning does not work so well, and to pay for a development process that they steer, rather than a hypothetical but detailed "plan" - Rev and other Agile Tools have the advantage here in that results can be made visible right from the word go. The only form of quantifying I have found useful are Sprint Back Catalogues - which basically keep a daily cumulative graph of time to completion to the end of the next sprint cycle. As a counter to all this Agile development nonsense I came across this ditty a while back :) Imagine (with apologies to John Lennon) Imagine there's no requirements. It's easy if you try Just a bunch of coders, reachin' for the sky Imagine all the people, coding for today Imagine there's no schedules. It isn't hard to do No silly project deadlines, no one supervising you Imagine all the people, coding hand in hand You may say I'm an extremer but I'm not the only one I hope someday you'll join us and make coding lots more fun. Imagine oral documentation. I wonder if you can No need for UML diagrams. Just words passed, man to man Imagine just refactoring, playing in the sand You may say I'm an extremer, but I'm not the only one I hope someday you'll join us and make coding lots more fun. Taken from Stephens, D. Rosenberg. Extreme Programming Refactored But apart from saying I don't think it is possible - am I missing the point? _______________________________________________ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution