QSM Resources

Forty years of research – in one convenient place.

Articles and Whitepapers

In the interest of supporting the software development industry, the following resources are available free of charge.

An Analysis of Function Point Trends

By Donald Beckett ( July 2013 )

An Analysis of Function Point Trends by Don Beckett - Function point analysis has played an important role in software measurement and analysis for 30 years. This study looks at the QSM software project database and examines a set of validated projects counted in function points that have completed since the year 2000 to see what they tell about productivity, schedule, and staffing. We are fortunate to have several thousand projects in this sample to work with as this allows us to parse the data many different ways and still have enough projects to be statistically significant. For this study only unadjusted function points were used.

Read the article

Making the First Cut: Sizing New Technology

By Mike Ross ( September 1997 )

This article discusses how you can estimate the size of something you’ve never done before.

Read the article

Measurement Improves Tender Evaluation

By Anthony Hemens ( September 1997 )

This article discusses how you can quantitatively evaluate potential suppliers and determine whether or not a potential supplier is likely to perform as promised.

Read the article

The Economics of Software Product Development

By Mike Ross ( April 1997 )

This article discusses capital investments we can make and process improvement policies we can adopt that will have a large impact on future projects.

Read the article

Team Size Can Be the Key to a Successful Project

By Doug Putnam ( April 1997 )

This article discusses how many people you should use on your development team.

Read the article

Estimating Millennium Resources

By Jim Greene ( November 1996 )

This article discusses what will happen to your date-dependent software when the year rolls from 1999 to 2000.

Read the article