Automated estimation of functional size from code

Abstract

Determination of the size of a software project is challenging as well as crucial for both self-employed software developers and corporate businesses. That's why it is subjected to a lot of academic studies where it is discussed how to determine the size more accurately. Functional Size Measurement (FSM) is one the most popular measurement techniques for a software from the point of the delivered functionality. However, the aspects of know-how, the cost, time, and manual operation creates difficulties to apply FSM techniques. This study aims to solve these issues by automating the measurement process to approximate the functional size of a project using the COSMIC Functional Size Measurement. The end product of this study is called 'Cosmic APP' that utilizes the sequence diagram of a software after reverse engineering it from the given code using a third-party tool called 'SequenceDiagram'. The working principles, the estimation process, and the obtained results of 'Cosmic APP' are described thoroughly in this paper. © 2020 IEEE.