An Introduction to Function Point Analysis

1. What's it all about,Alfie?

1.1 why measure anything?
”When you can measure what you are speaking about and express it in numbers,you know that on which you are discoursing;but when you can ot measure,when you cannot express it in numbers,you knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind: it may be the beginning of knowledge,but you have scarcely,in your thoughts,advanced to the stage of a science”-Lord Kelvin

1.2 Whare are we measuring?

1.3 Categories of mereic

1.4 The line of Code

1.5 The prodcutivity problem
It becomes increasingly obvious that to talk about software size in terms of  LOC is generally not appropriate.We have seen that what we are really interested in is the funcion of the software theat we produce.If we can measure the funcion then we can produce productivity measures which can truly be compared with productivity measures from other develpment environments.Another way of looking at An Introduction To Function Point Analysis.
LOC measure is compare it to the wrapping on a gift.A present is often in a gift wrapped box.This outer appearance tells us only how large is the packaging;it does not tell us how large,or even how useful is the gift inside.In summary,the main issues that lead to the LOC being an unsatisfactory measure are:
->Comments Some programmers will heavily comment their code
->Style Different programmers have their own style.
->Functional equivalence As illustrated above,two protams that are funcionally equivalent can be very different in size when measured in terms of the number of lines of code.
->Enviroment/programmer/methodology dependent It is most possible to compare productivity of development activities which lie on the different sides of these boundaries.
->Alternative solution For  a given specification we will get different LOC measures when given to different developers to implement.
->Fitness for purpose/safe critical A single line of code is hjarder to produce for a nuclear power plant than for a student record system due to the more rigorous constranints applied to the development task in the nuclear plant.

1.6 IBM's solution