ISO/IEC Approves Object Management Group Standard for Automated Function Points

The Object Management Group® (OMG®), an international, open membership, not-for-profit technology standards consortium, today announced that its Automated Function Points™ specification has been approved as ISO 19515 by the International Standards Organization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). Version 1.0 of Automated Function Points was balloted through the Joint Technical Committee on Information Technology (JTC 1) of ISO and given the designation ISO/IEC 19515.

Available as an OMG international standard since December 2014, Automated Function Points is the 12th OMG specification to be ratified as an ISO standard. “We are pleased that ISO/IEC JTC 1 member countries agreed that OMG Automated Function Points is a significant milestone in automated software sizing. We were one of the first organizations approved to the ISO Fast Track and PAS processes and appreciate our long relationship with ISO. I want to thank the team at the Consortium for IT Software Quality™ that submitted the specification to OMG,” said William Hoffman, OMG President and COO.

Automated Function Points measure the size of a software product, according to the counting guidelines of the International Function Point Users Group (IFPUG). Traditionally, certified counters have counted function points manually, which can be expensive and result in inconsistencies for the same piece of software. The OMG standard is detailed enough to be automatable, making it consistent and simple to use.

CISQ Founding Executive Director, Dr. Bill Curtis said, “The new ISO/IEC international standard for automating Function Point analysis will increase the adoption of this valuable measure by reducing its cost and increasing its consistency. It is already in use by the French government. I thank David Herron, co-author of Function Point Analysis and a leader in IFPUG, and the entire international CISQ team who contributed to this specification.”

Along with selected other measures, function points can be used in the following activities:

• Software quality and productivity analysis
• Estimating the costs and resources required for software development, enhancement, and maintenance
• Calibrating estimating methods against the results of past estimates
• Contracting with and managing contracts with system integrators and outsourcers
• Normalizing data used in software comparisons
• Determining the size of a purchased application package (COTS or customized system) by sizing all the functionality included in the package
• Enabling users to determine the ROI of an application by sizing the functionality that specifically matches the requirements of their organization

About OMG
The Object Management Group® (OMG®) is an international, open membership, not-for-profit technology standards consortium with representation from government, industry and academia. OMG Task Forces develop enterprise integration standards for a wide range of technologies and an even wider range of industries.

-NEEDHAM, MASS. (PRWEB)