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International Conference on Application of Natural Language to Information Systems

NLDB 2010: Natural Language Processing and Information Systems pp 80–91Cite as

Towards Approximating COSMIC Functional Size from User Requirements in Agile Development Processes Using Text Mining

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 6177))

Abstract

Measurement of software size from user requirements is crucial for the estimation of the developmental time and effort. COSMIC, an ISO/IEC international standard for functional size measurement, provides an objective method of measuring the functional size of the software from user requirements. COSMIC requires the user requirements to be written at a level of granularity, where interactions between the internal and the external environments to the system are visible to the human measurer, in a form similar to use case descriptions. On the other hand, requirements during an agile software development iteration are written in a less formal way than use case descriptions — often in the form of user stories, for example, keeping with the goal of delivering a planned release as quickly as possible. Therefore, size measurement in agile processes uses methods (e.g. story-points, smart estimation) that strictly depend on the subjective judgment of the experts, and avoid using objective measurement methods like COSMIC. In this paper, we presented an innovative concept showing that using a supervised text mining approach, COSMIC functional size can be automatically approximated from informally written textual requirements, demonstrating its applicability in popular agile software development processes, such as Scrum.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering, Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

    Ishrar Hussain, Leila Kosseim & Olga Ormandjieva

Authors
  1. Ishrar Hussain
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  2. Leila Kosseim
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  3. Olga Ormandjieva
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Engineering, Cardiff University, UK

    Christina J. Hopfe  & Haijiang Li  & 

  2. Informatics Research Institute, University of Salford, M5 4WT, Greater Manchester, UK

    Yacine Rezgui

  3. Centre National des Arts et Métiers,  

    Elisabeth Métais

  4. School of Computer Science, Cardiff University, UK

    Alun Preece

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© 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Hussain, I., Kosseim, L., Ormandjieva, O. (2010). Towards Approximating COSMIC Functional Size from User Requirements in Agile Development Processes Using Text Mining. In: Hopfe, C.J., Rezgui, Y., Métais, E., Preece, A., Li, H. (eds) Natural Language Processing and Information Systems. NLDB 2010. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 6177. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-13881-2_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-13881-2_8

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-13880-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-13881-2

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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