Measure the Required Effort

Measuring the amount of effort needed is not usually the responsibility of the requirements analyst. We mention this topic here because now that the requirements are known, you have an ideal opportunity to measure the size of the product. Common sense suggests that you do not proceed past this point without knowing this size, and thus the effort needed to build the product.

To this end, we have included a short introduction to function point counting in appendix C. The appendix is not intended to teach you everything there is to know about function point counting, but rather to show how this technique works and suggest it as an effective way to estimate size.

The work you have done in gathering the requirements provides input to the measuring process. For example, the context model is a rich source of things to measure. A data model (if you have one) also provides input to measurement. You can even simply count the number of requirements you have written. All of these are measurements, and all are vastly preferable to guesswork and blind acceptance of imposed deadlines. One of the most commonly encountered risks is the risk of making poor estimates of the time needed to complete the project. This risk almost always eventually manifests itself as an actual problem, where the solution is usually to take shortcuts, skimp on quality, and end up delivering a poor product even later than originally planned. Such a risk can be avoided by allocating the short time needed to measure the size of the product and, thereby, the required effort to build it.