Automated Function Point Analysis

The cost and complexity of fielding Navy combat systems has led to a paradigm shift from developing monolithic, complete system upgrades every 10 12 years to a product line architecture, and a capability phasing plan, that provides for more frequent, incremental upgrades. These incremental upgrades meet mission requirements and looming threats in a more timely fashion and provides just in time solutions for fleet needs. A major component of this approach is to re-use or capture existing software code from one incremental upgrade to the next to minimize redevelopment and retest as much as possible. Traditionally a standard metric for estimating the cost and impact of new and modified code has been to determine the number of Source Lines of Code (SLOCs) being developed or modified. The SLOC estimate methodology has been heavily leveraged by the Navy, but because of differing industry practices and the uncertainty involved in this type of estimation it has not been entirely effective. SimVentions supports the Navys desire to move to a Function Point Analysis (FPA) methodology and is proposing a three pronged approach, leveraging existing SimVentions SBIR technology to building an Automated Function Point Analysis tool.