A Cosmic-FFP Approach to Estimate WEB Application Development Effort

Web applications are constantly increasing both in complexity and number of offered features. In this paper we address the problem of estimating the effort required to develop dynamic web applications, which represents an emerging issue in the field of web engineering. In particular, we formalize a method which is based on the main ideas underlying COSMIC-FFP (Cosmic Full Function Point), which is an adaptation of the Function Point method, especially devised to tackle real-time and embedded applications. The method is focused on counting data movements and turns out to be suitable for capturing the specific aspects of dynamic web applications which are characterized by data movements to and from web servers. The method can be applied to analysis and design documentation in order to provide an early estimation. We also describe the empirical analysis carried out to verify the usefulness of the method for predicting web application development effort.