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Software Function, Source Lines of Code, and Development Effort Prediction: A Software Science Validation
Abstract
One of the most important problems faced by software developers and users is the prediction of the size of a programming system and its development effort. As an alternative to "size," one might deal with a measure of the "function" that the software is to perform. Albrecht [1] has developed a methodology to estimate the amount of the "function" the software is to perform, in terms of the data it is to use (absorb) and to generate (produce). The "function" is quantified as "function points," essentially, a weighted sum of the numbers of "inputs," "outputs,"master files," and "inquiries" provided to, or generated by, the software. This paper demonstrates the equivalence between Albrecht's external input/output data flow representative of a program (the "function points" metric) and Halstead's [2] "software science" or "software linguistics" model of a program as well as the "soft content" variation of Halstead's model suggested by Gaffney [7].
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Citations
Cited by
Clarke, P., & O’Connor, R. V. (2012) · Information and Software Technology · doi:10.1016/j.infsof.2011.12.003 · Cited by 332
Rai, A., Maruping, L. M., & Venkatesh, V. (2009) · MIS Quarterly · doi:10.2307/20650313 · Cited by 311
An Empirical Analysis of Productivity and Quality in Software Products
Krishnan, M. S., Kriebel, C. H., Kekre, S., & Mukhopadhyay, T. (2000) · Management Science · doi:10.1287/mnsc.46.6.745.11941 · Cited by 264
Data mining techniques for software effort estimation: a comparative study
Dejaeger, K., Verbeke, W., Martens, D., & Baesens, B. (2012) · IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering · doi:10.1109/tse.2011.55 · Cited by 224
How does radical collocation help a team succeed?
Teasley, S., Covi, L., Krishnan, M. S., & Olson, J. S. (2000) · Proceedings of the 2000 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work · doi:10.1145/358916.359005 · Cited by 224
Metadata
- Authors
- Albrecht, A. J., & Gaffney, J. E.
- Venue
- IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering
- Published
- 1983-11
- Volume
- SE-9
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 639-648
- ISSN
- 0098-5589 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W1994410397
- Cited by
- 1,558
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 35.15
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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- Albrecht, A. J., & Gaffney, J. E. (1983). Software Function, Source Lines of Code, and Development Effort Prediction: A Software Science Validation. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering. https://doi.org/10.1109/tse.1983.235271
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