An Agile Function Point Method Of Cost Estimation For Information System

This paper improves conventional software cost estimation model and theory and makes theoretic creations, presenting an agile method for cost estimation so as to enhance accuracy, flexibility and extend its scope of contemporary model or method, which is able to assist making decisions through providing valuable information of relevant economic issues within project management domain for developing an information system.As the core and foundation of some relevant economic issues of software development, software cost estimation is the most challenge business of software development project management. Only through scientific means, it is possible to appropriately estimate system's size, working hours and cost and further make good plans and project control measurements. This central issue still asks some experts concentrate on cost estimation and gradually develop several models like COCOMO or functional point and make further improvements and enhancements. However, since software development is a high dynamic activity which differs in its development environment, it is hard to estimate cost through single model. Meanwhile, as object-oriented thought penetrates into software development fields, software cases based on the UML and RUP has been matured gradually, existing models cannot deal with these new born technology or tools with enough accuracy, which has bred new issues on this domain.In all, on the basis of IFPUG, this paper establishes an agile functional point cost estimation model through investigating statistic features of information system development, while transform static software productivity estimation into an dynamic one. This model also takes human experience and team structure into consideration, preliminarily probing software reuse's influence on system's cost and then providing a more flexible and accurate method for facilitating difficult and complex cost estimation.