ROHINI COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY
IT 8075 – SOFTWARE PROJECT MANAGEMENT
COSMIC full function points
COSMIC FFP – Common Software Measurement International Consortium Full
Function Point.
COSMIC deals with decomposing the system architecture into a hierarchy of
software layers.
Unit is Cfsu(COSMIC functional size units).
A Data Movement moves one Data Group. A Data Group is a unique cohesive set of data
(attributes) specifying an ‘object of interest’ (i.e. something that is ‘of interest’ tothe user). Each
Data Movement is counted as one CFP (COSMIC function point).
COSMIC recognizes 4 (types of) Data Movements:
Entry moves data from outside into the process
Exit moves data from the process to the outside world
Read moves data from persistent storage to the process
Write moves data from the process to persistent
storage.
Function Points
Function points were defined in 1979 in Measuring Application Development Productivity
by Allan Albrecht at IBM. The functional user requirements of the software are identified and each
one is categorized into one of five types: outputs, inquiries, inputs, internal files, and external
interfaces. Once the function is identified and categorized into a type, it is then assessed for
complexity and assigned a number of function points. Each of these functional user requirements
maps to an end-user business function, such as a data entry for an Input or a user query for an
Inquiry. This distinction is important because it tends to make the functions measured in function
points map easily into user-oriented requirements, but it also tends to hide internal functions (e.g.
algorithms), which also require resources to implement.
There is currently no ISO recognized FSM Method that includes algorithmic complexity in the
sizing result. Recently there have been different approaches proposed to deal with this perceived
weakness, implemented in several commercial software products. The variations of the Albrecht-
