COSMIC
The Common Software Measurement International Consortium

advancing software functional size measurement

Latest Publications

Cosmic Newsletter
March 2008 is now available.
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Benefits of Cosmic
A paper by Charles Symons expaining the financial benefits software measurement, and how this relates to the Cosmic
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The ‘COSMIC Method’, version 3.0 is now available

The Common Software Measurement International Consortium (‘COSMIC’) is pleased to announce that the major upgrade of the COSMIC Functional Size Measurement Method, version 3.0, is now available.  The three documents listed below may now be down-loaded, free-of-charge, from the www.gelog.etsmtl.ca/cosmic website.

The three COSMIC Method v3.0 documents are:

·        ‘Documentation Overview and Glossary of Terms’, which gives an overview of all COSMIC method documentation and lists and defines all terms that are common to all COSMIC documents

·        ‘Method Overview’, which gives an introduction to the method for beginners and those interested in converting from ‘1^st Generation’ FSM methods

·        ‘Measurement Manual’, which is the main reference document for practical use of the method

A fourth document ‘Advanced and Related Topics’ dealing with subjects for experienced practitioners and on topics like conversion of sizes from other methods will be published before the end of 2007.

Version 3.0 represents the first major update of the COSMIC method for four years (the previous version was 2.2) and as the designation implies, the new documents contain important advances and clarifications of the method.  Note, however, the basic model used to measure a functional size of software via the COSMIC method has not changed since it was first published in 1999.

The most significant advance in version 3.0 is an improvement in the measurement process by separating an initial ‘Measurement Strategy’ phase, which addresses the question of which functional size to measure more clearly than in previous versions.

A piece of software is like an irregular object, it has many functional sizes.  For example, a human user of a piece of software embedded in, say, a domestic appliance sees less functionality than the hardware device 'users' of the software that drive the appliance.  In the 'Measurement Strategy' phase, the measurer must consider several parameters before starting a measurement to ensure that the results can be properly interpreted, used and compared with other measurements.

The new material represents a major breakthrough for functional size measurement in general, because the parameters are valid for all FSM Methods, not just for the COSMIC method.  The ideas will be especially important for estimating methods and for all benchmarking activities. 

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