Abstract: ISO 14143-1 specifies that a functional size measurement (FSM) method must provide measurement procedures to quantify the functional user requirements (FURs) of software. Such quantitative information, functional size, is typically used, for instance, in software estimation. One of the international standards for FSM is the COSMIC FSM method — ISO 19761 — which was designed to be applied both to the business application (BA) software domain and to the real-time software domain. A recurrent problem in FSM is the availability and quality of the inputs required for measurement purposes; that is, well documented FURs. Business process (BP) models, as they are commonly used to gather requirements from the early stages of a project, could be a valuable source of information for FSM. In a previous article, the feasibility of such an approach for the BA domain was analyzed using the Qualigram BP modeling notation. This paper complements that work by: (1) analyzing the use of BPMN for FSM in the BA domain; (2) presenting notation-independent guidelines for the BA domain; and (3) analyzing the possibility of using BP models to perform FSM in the real-time domain. The measurement results obtained from BP models are compared with those of previous FSM case studies.

Abstract: Business process models can be useful for requirements elicitation, among other things. Software development depends on the quality of the requirements elicitation activities, and so adequately modeling business processes (BPs) is critical. A key factor in achieving this is the active participation of all the stakeholders in the development of a shared vision of BPs.
Unfortunately, organizations often find themselves left with inconsistent BPs that do not cover all the stakeholders’ needs
and constraints. However, consolidation of the various stakeholder requirements may be facilitated through the use of multiple levels of abstraction (MLA). This article contributes to the research into MLA use in business process modeling (BPM) for software requirements by reviewing the theoretical foundations of MLA and their use in various BP-oriented approaches.

Abstract: How is software measurement addressed in undergraduate and graduate programs in universities? Do organizations consider that the graduating students they hire have an adequate knowledge of software measurement? To answer these and related questions, a survey was administered to participants who attended the IWSM-MENSURA 2010 conference in Stuttgart, Germany. Forty-seven of the 69 conference participants (including software development practitioners, software measurement consultants, university professors, and graduate students) took part in the survey. The results indicate that software measurement topics are: A) covered mostly at the graduate level and not at the undergraduate level, and B) not mandatory. Graduate students and professors consider that, of the measurement topics covered in university curricula, specific topics, such as measures for the requirements phase, and measurement techniques and tools, receive more attention in the academic context. A common observation of the practitioners who participated in the survey was that students hired as new employees bring limited software measurement-related knowledge to their organizations. Discussion of the findings and directions for future research are presented.