Policies and publications on the COSMIC-FFP method, in English and other languages

Policies and publications on the COSMIC method, in English and other languages

The key starting point for all COSMIC publications is the International Standard ISO/IEC 19761:2003 which states the basic principles and rules of the COSMIC method. This document is under the control of ISO (the International Organization for Standardization) and is available only from ISO (www.iso.org), in English. A Spanish translation is available of this standard from the Spanish National Standards Body

It is the policy of COSMIC that all of its publications should be in the public domain and available free-of-charge. All COSMIC publications are available for download from www.gelog.etsmtl.ca.

The most important COSMIC publication is the COSMIC Measurement Manual (The COSMIC Implementation Guide to ISO/IEC 19761:2003), version 3. This sets out the basic principles and rules with a comprehensive explanation of how to use the method.

Translations of the Measurement Manual v2.2 are available in the following languages.

French
German (in preparation)
Italian
Spanish
Japanese (of v 2.1 of the Measurement Manual)

Updates to the Measurement Manual between major versions are published as ‘Method Update Bulletins’. Two Bulletins have been published so far.

1. Proposed improvements to the definition and characteristics of a software ‘Layer’ (2004)

2. Proposed improvement to the definition of an ‘Object of interest’ (2005)

Next in importance are Guidelines for the application of COSMIC to specific software domains. These give more details and examples on how to apply the rules in specific domains.

The first such ‘Guideline for sizing Business Application software using COSMIC’ was published at the end of 2005. This Guideline should also help measurement specialists to convert from ‘1^st generation’ FSM Methods. Another such Guideline is proposed for sizing real-time software, aiming to be published in 2006.

COSMIC also publishes a series of case studies to illustrate the application of the method to some very simple sets of Functional User Requirements. These are also available fromwww.gelog.etsmtl.ca, but at the time of writing they are in the process of being upgraded to remove some possibilities of mis-interpretation of the requirements.

Change Requests to any of these publications that have been approved by the Measurement Practices Committee but not yet incorporated in the Measurement Manual or via Method Update Bulletins will also be published on http://www.gelog.etsmtl.ca/cosmic-ffp.

Finally, COSMIC also publishes general information such as these articles and occasional newsletters on the www.cosmicon.com web-site.

(last updated December 2005)