Mobile applications affect our everyday activities and have become more and more information centric. Effort estimation for mobile application is an essential factor to consider in the development cycle. Due to feature complexities and size, effort estimation of mobile applications poses a continued challenge for developers. This paper attempts to adapt COSMIC Function Point and Unified Modeling Language (UML) techniques to estimate the size of a given mobile application. The COSMIC concepts capture data movements of the functional processes whereas the UML class analyzes them. We utilize the Use Case Diagrams, sequence diagrams and class diagrams for mapping the Function user requirements for sizing mobile applications. We further present a new size measurement technique; Unadjusted Mobile COSMIC Function points (UMCFP) to get the functional size of mobile application using Mobile Complex Factors as an input. In this study eight mobile applications were analyzed using UMCFP, Function Point Analysis and COSMIC Function Point. The results were compared with the actual size of previous Mobile application projects.
With the increased complexity in mobile applications, many challenges and issues emerged for the software project management team to develop mobile application effectively and accurately. Effort estimation is one of the most critical issues the Software management project team faces in general, and the mobile application development team in specific. Effort estimation helps to approximate the cost required for successful software application development. The mobile application is distinct in various aspects from the traditional software and web-based applications. There is a need for a specific methodology to be followed for accurate estimation of size and efforts. This research aims to review the effectiveness of COSMIC and Machine Learning techniques in performing mobile effort estimation and propose a hybrid approach for efficient mobile effort estimation. This research work's mains represent the methodology followed to achieve the input parameters and mobile applications' efforts using a tailor-made approach. The significance of this research work is to propose a framework that will help both researchers and mobile application estimators approximate the efficient efforts precisely.
Background:
Mobile application and Effort estimation have direct relationship where on
the basis of size, mobile application development efforts can be determined. Inaccuracy or inappropriateness
in this approach can cause underestimation or overestimation. The main phase of Mobile
application development is to standardize the approach to predict the size of an application.
Objectives:
The primary objective of this study is to quantify the functionality provided by the software to
the end users it is necessary to know the size of an application. This paper focuses on the background of
Mobile application size measures, Mobile complexity factors and the future work of the size measure.
Methods:
This is a survey based study where the primary endpoint was to see the resemblance of selected
parameters with modern day mobile application development, a list of questions commonly
known as questionnaire was prepared and was sent to more than 140 people including practitioners,
researchers and industry people.
Results:
Out of 40 Parameters 9 parameters were selected to be includes as Mobile complex factors
in order to calculate the functional size of a mobile application. Hence new concept for mobile size
measures is introduced.
Conclusion:
Mobile complexity factors were proposed to form a standard to be used as an input in
proposed size metrics for estimation of Mobile application development. To validate the effectiveness
of this research work, there is something that is to be achieved in future:
a) Propose a New Sizing metrics to calculate size of a Mobile application.
b) Proposing a model for estimation of Cost in Mobile application development so that the there will
be more accuracy in the resultant value and the process of estimation will be more streamlined.
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