A sizing measure for adaptive maintenance work products

A requirement for productivity models and productivity analysis is the ability to define a sizing technique of the product of a work process. There is currently a lack of measurement techniques for sizing the work product of software maintenance activities. This paper reports on research work carried out to define a sizing technique for the work product of the maintenance activities of the adaptive category. The proposed sizing technique is based on an extension to the Function Points technique which has been designed to measure the functional size of software applications from a user´s perspective. However, it has been used mostly to measure either medium or large development or enhancement projects. An extended version of Function Points is proposed to take into account a finer level of granularity congruent with the small maintenance work products. This extension provides the ability to adequately size products that would have been previously bundled within the same size interval when using the conventional technique. This extension was field tested in an organization over a four-year period and preliminary results are discussed