Software Estimation Quiz: Function Point Method

IT Support for Business Applications

• A business application can be defined as the totality of application software, associated data, and the hardware, system software, and communication facilities required for its use.
• Management Information Systems (MIS) utilize internal & external data (e.g., market research, statistics, online databases) combined into a flexible form (e.g., data warehouse).
• Business applications can either support existing operational processes or enable new products/services (e.g., e-commerce, mobile payments, digital health apps).

Adaptation Techniques for Standard Business Software

• Configuration: Defines compulsory settings for initial deployment, enabling individual variations of standard software.
• Extension: Allows for optional functionalities and mapping of unforeseen requirements, implemented by manufacturers to enhance services.
• Coupling: Connects external systems of different manufacturers or the same type via predefined data formats, APIs, or communication protocols.

Requirements Engineering

• A vast majority of IT projects are not completed on time, within budget, or at all.
• Incomplete requirements are a significant cause of project failures.
• Requirements engineering focuses on elicitation, analysis, specification, and validation of software projects.
• Requirements define the needs and constraints of the software project. Functional & non-functional requirements together constrain the solution space.
• Requirements specification (Lastenheft) details customer desires, while functional specification (Pflichtenheft) outlines the system's observable behavior acting as a contractual basis.
• Requirements engineering should comprise roughly 30% of a software project's total effort.

Requirements Engineering in Scrum

• While the Scrum Guide doesn't explicitly mention requirements engineering, understanding customer needs is crucial.
• Common requirements engineering artifacts in agile contexts include use cases, scenarios, UML diagrams, and prototypes.

Software Estimation

• Software estimation defines the budget & timeframe needed to deliver a product.
• Accurate estimation is essential for contract negotiations.
• Agile contexts involve multiple estimation points throughout the development process using metrics like lines of code, LOC per month, or LOC per year, and the team's estimated individual programming productivity.
• Factors like quality, functionality, and reliability are key variables in evaluating the optimal size of a team and its expected delivery time.

Software Estimation Methods

• Comparison methods: Based on the analysis of already completed projects with similar characteristics (analogy, relation, and percentage methods).
• Algorithmic methods: Utilize mathematical models (statistical models), like the Function Point Method, to estimate software effort.
• Sampling methods: Extrapolate the cost of individual units or project phases (multiplication and percentage methods).

Categorization of Product Requirements

• Functional Requirements: Input, output, or query requests.
• Product Data Requirements: Database or references (read-only or those with continuous updating needed).

Application Architecture

• Layered architectures: Partition software components into layers.
• Tiered architectures: Define a physical partitioning of software components into different process spaces.
• Client-server architectures: A common example of a tiered architecture where the client sends requests to a server, receiving responses.

Software Design Patterns & Libraries

• Libraries: Reusable modules or components extending functionality through their API.
• Frameworks: Provide partially finished system with specific architecture, enabling quicker development through augmenting it with application-specific code.
• Inversion of Control: The framework acts as a director controlling the process while the application code works as the actor, following instructions.
• Dependency Injection: A design pattern enabling independent construction & use of objects, improving code maintainability.

Database Transactions and persistence

• Database Transactions: Adhere to the ACID properties: Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability for reliable data management.
• JPA (Java Persistence API): A standard API for managing persistent data and includes tools like Hibernate (a framework enabling SQL-like operations).
• Object-Relational Mapping (ORM): A technique to convert and manage object-based data into a database's relational table structure.
• JDBC: A tool enabling the interaction between Java Code and various types of databases, including MySQL, PostgreSQL, H2, etc.

Persistence Associations

• @OneToOne: One-to-one mapping between entities
• @OneToMany / @ManyToOne: One-to-Many or Many-to-One mappings.
• @Inheritance: Strategies for representing object inheritance (in a database).
• MappedSuperClass / TablePerClass: Strategies to map object inheritance to database tables.
• Query languages: Tools to access stored data from the database. QueryDSL and JPQL are widely used.

Security Engineering

• Core principles: Confidentiality, Integrity, Accessibility (CIA triad), and non-repudiation.
• Authentication and Authorization methods.
• Password management (never storing in plain text).
• Vulnerabilities in web APIs.

Software Estimation Methodology

• Techniques like Analogy methods, Relation methods, Weighting methods, comparison methods are used when quantifying estimations. Data from previous projects with corresponding parameters and/or features is essential to produce reliable results.

Use of Application-Specific Tags

• Tags within the application are essential in cases when a generic set of parameters cannot be employed.

Other Considerations

• Typical application architecture includes layers (e.g., presentation layer, business logic layer, and data layer).
• Frameworks aid in quicker development by providing shared functions.