People want to use function points to measure the productivity of new development, the amount of support necessary for existing application portfolios and the productivity of enhancement projects. However, there are some large issues that every organization must address. These are beyond the scope of IFPUG counting practices. IFPUG has a documented procedure to measure new development function points. However, that procedure leaves a number of critical questions unanswered.

What does the term "wireless" imply? Wireless describes the products and standards that allow communications without additional electrical connections. Typically, the term wireless implies that electromagnetic waves traveling through the air carry information from one place to another. Depending on their frequency, these waves exhibit different properties. For example, microwaves (on the order of GHz) tend to bounce off walls and objects.

Rear fill" refers to the presence of depth and ambiance in music. A properly designed system using two channels will reproduce original rear fill on the source without rear high frequency drivers. Since recordings are made in two channels, that is all you will need to reproduce it. What is captured at the recording session (coincident pair mics, Blumlein mic patterns, etc.) by a two channel mic array will capture the so called rear fill or ambiance.

The number of lines of code is the traditional way of gauging application size. Some people claim it is still relevant because it measures what software developers actually do, that is, write lines of code. They will use lines of code either instead of or in addition to function points. Other practitioners say lines of code are irrelevant. Capers Jones has declared "the use of lines of code metrics for productivity and quality studies to be regarded as professional malpractice starting in 1995.

In the late seventies, IBM felt the need to develop a language independent approach to estimating software development effort. It tasked one of its employees, Allan Albrecht, with developing this approach. The result was the function point technique. In the early eighties, the function point technique was refined and a counting manual was produced by IBM's GUIDE organization. The International Function Point Users Group (IFPUG) was founded in the late eighties.

Between 1989 and 1992, the Boeing Company considered the use of function points to measure productivity. An internal Boeing Company document was published in the proceedings of the Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference in 1992. It defined a technique called 3D function points. The new technique was designed to address two classic problems associated with the Albrecht approach. First, the approach is considered difficult to use.

Like voting, you should count early and often! The sooner you can quantify what a project is delivering, the sooner it is under control. Traditionally, many practitioners believed that function point counting could not occur until product design (or external design, another name for the same thing) was complete. IFPUG members have long realized the importance of being able to count function points earlier in the development life cycle. Under IFPUG 4.

was explained in a previous question, IFPUG identifies three types of counts: development project counts, enhancement project counts and application counts. The first and last are basically the same. A development project of 1,000 function will result in an application that has an application count of 1,000 function points. However, subjecting that application to an enhancement project of 500 function point may result in an application that is sized at anywhere from 500 to 1,500 function points.

There are basically two methods to transform function point counts into development estimates. The first is to assume a certain level of productivity in function points per person and calendar month. The second is to convert the function point count into an equivalent number of lines of code and use a macro estimating model like COCOMO. This latter method allows a variety of other factors, in addition to function points, to be considered in the estimate.

The answer is “YES”! NFP effectiveness comes from the evaluation of each cycle on its own merits. Thus, a woman who knows and understands the five indicators of fertility can easily determine when she is and is not fertile in any cycle. Women who do have irregular cycles may find that it will take them one or two more cycles to determine their fertility indicators than women with regular cycles.

Post your communications with the idea of contributing to others (and being contributed to by others) who are in a situation similar to yours. Ask questions, give your opinion, read what others have to say. Clients find that participating in a discussion board with other clients is a valuable asset as they move through the transition process.

Disciplinary issues are generally presented to peer Residence Judicial Councils, and/or the Associate Dean of Student Development. As much as is possible, students will be given the option for community service in lieu of fines, unless damage to university property has been incurred. In addition, systems of accountability, such as counseling, accountability partners, etc. are used for behavioral intervention.

soon as a publisher notifies us that a book is unavailable-out-of-stock, out-of-stock indefinitely, or out-of-print-we first search the national wholesale market for new and/or used books to see if we can secure enough copies. If not, we will immediately contact you to discuss the situation so that you can make an alternative selection, if possible. Having your texts on the buyback list is critical for us to keep costs down for students.

When IFPUG started to release Counting Practice Manuals, they introduced the idea of a second way to count function points. The first way was the traditional Albrecht approach based on the analysis of transactions. The second way was to be based on a data modeling approach. IFPUG always indicated that this approach would be specified in later releases of their manuals. IFPUG has always recognized there are two key requirements to keeping the function point measure effective.

The current IFPUG manual is organized in such a way that chapters two through eight correspond to the steps necessary to perform a function point count. The following steps will give an equivalent count, but stress some practical considerations. Deviations from the IFPUG presentation are explained. Plan the Count. This step includes two IFPUG steps: determine the type of count, and identify counting boundary.

The two productivity metrics that get the most attention are function points implemented per staff month and function points implemented per calendar month. When measuring software maintenance activities, enhancement function points can be substituted into these same metrics. The number of function points supported per staff member is also commonly tracked. Function points implemented per calendar month indicates the speed with which systems can be developed.

MATLAB wasn't designed to be used this way. But, if you don't reference any variables between your calls to 'dbup' and 'dbdown' (i.e., you just use 'save', 'who', 'dir', etc), it should work. Otherwise, you may well run into problems. If you 'dbup' while in a function, you change the workspace context while continuing execution of the original function. This means that subsequent references to variables will be bound to variables in a different workspace.

Macintosh (Apple) users may get error messages like 'Authentication failed due to insufficient credentials' when accessing an EBSCO database with a non-compatible browser. Use the text-only version of EBSCOhost that is listed on the main list of databases in Maine InfoNet. Try a different browser: Internet Explorer, Netscape, Mozilla, Safari (Mac only), Opera, etc. Also, Mac users may experience difficulty opening PDFs automatically. The PDF file appears in .

Living in a condominium complex sometimes involves dealing with property management. Condominium expert Peter Curley of CURLEY REALTY provides advice in how to get issues resolved when the come up:Real estate tips from Peter Curley of Curley Realty. Information is provided by Its Time to Move Up, the real estate resource for consumers who want their questions answers in ways they can understand. For more information please visit www.curleyrealty.com or www.itstimetomoveup.tv.

Beginning October 1, 1997, the words "custody" and "visitation" no longer appear in the statutes governing dissolutions. "Parenting" and "parental contact" are the new terms used. Terminology was changed to eliminate disputes between parents over words used and focus attention on the best interests of the children. Parents now must file a "Parenting Plan." The plan can be simple or complex. Forms may be used to identify virtually every potential parenting issue that could arise.

A wide variety of issues can be addressed in mediation. Common workplace issues such as personality conflicts, inter- or intra-departmental turmoil, and rifts between senior managers are appropriate for mediation, as are more compliance-related issues such as sexual harassment, disability discrimination, and age discrimination.

The DVC is part of Interval International (a large, worldwide timeshare organization). Your Disney Vacation Club points can be traded for accommodations at many of the Interval Internationals resorts nationwide. You can also use your points to stay at other Disney resorts, as well as the DVC locations at Vero Beach, FL and Hilton Head, SC. and a number of other vacation opportunities such as the Disney Cruise Line and special Adventure programs.

Yes. When the function point technique was originally developed, it was not applied to systems with Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs). There were no systems with GUIs! Even as late as three years ago, there was a certain amount of disagreement between function point practitioners regarding how to count these systems. Two years ago, IFPUG completed Release 4.0 of their Function Point Counting Practices Manual.

Yes. In the simplest case, the user may be unaware of whether she is using a program running on a central computer or a set of programs running on various computers across a network. In fact, in the wonderful world of client/server, your application can abend (reach an abnormal end) because of a failure on a computer that you did not even know existed! This presents a strong argument that client-server systems can be counted just like any other ones.

Yes. You probably see the pattern here! The short answer is that they can be used to measure these applications and their size is the same as if object oriented development had not been used. This is because the function point count for an application is independent of the technology used to develop the application. However, the use of object orientation does tend to impact the function point count of the project that builds the application.

Technical people have long been the main function point counters. This made sense. Technical people often used the technique when called upon to generate estimates. Some more forward thinking technical managers used it to monitor the productivity of their departments.