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SOURCE: David Consulting Group
Survey results indicate widespread use of sizing across industries and regions, as well as overall predominance of function points
Malvern, PA (PRWEB) February 12, 2013
David Consulting Group (http://www.davidconsultinggroup.com), a leading international software development consulting firm, surveyed companies worldwide to provide a better understanding of how and why function points are being used today. An industry leader in function point sizing, David Consulting Group conducted this survey to garner quantitative information regarding organizations’ experiences with functional sizing in relation to application development.
Survey Methodology and Sample
Survey results were generated based on a combination of electronic survey completions, interviews and a historical analysis of DCG’s function point customer data.
Survey respondents spanned industries, including Service (25%), Finance (22%), Government (16%), Manufacturing (10%), Telecom (8%), Software (7%), Aerospace (4%) and more. In addition, respondents covered the globe: North America (42%), Europe (29%), Asia (15%), South America (10%) and Australia (1%).
Survey Results
Overall, the survey results showcase the widespread use of sizing – ninety-eight percent of the respondents have performed application development sizing at some point. In addition, a majority of the respondents have been sizing for three or more years for projects (69%) or applications (58%).
Other key takeaways from the survey include:
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Function points are the predominant measure for sizing application development software – most respondents utilize function points (IFPUG – 71%, Quick and Early Function Points – 14%, COSMIC – 11%) over alternatives (Lines of Code – 27%, Use Case Points – 19%, Story Points – 19%, T-Shirt – 15% and Component-based Sizing – 11%).
- Across industries, sizing is most often used for estimating projects, particularly development projects (78%). However, sizing for performance management is also popular internally (52%).
- Sizing is largely performed by in-house resources, with centralized, dedicated teams (50%) or development teams (48%).
- In North America, sizing is predominantly used for estimating development projects (32%), planning (25%), budgeting (20%) and internal performance measurement (20%).
- Most organizations (40%) do not audit their sizing results. Conversely, 36 percent utilize an in-house centralized, dedicated team to audit the results and 16 percent employ an external professional sizing team.
- Fewer than 20 percent of respondents use an automated tool to manage sizing; in fact, most respondents rely on manual spreadsheets for this task (69%).
Analysis
“The results of the survey indicate that sizing is more than a trend, it’s here to stay; increasingly, more and more companies, across industries, are applying some form of sizing measure to both applications and projects,” said David Herron, Vice President of Software Performance Management. “While overall use of sizing is growing, we advocate that these companies expand their use of the sizing metric, as well as further protect their investment by ensuring the accuracy of their sizing data with audits and the use of automated, commercial tools for data management.”
Listen to David Herron discuss the presentation highlights.
For more information about the survey or Function Points, contact David Herron.
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