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Improving the structural size measurement method through the assessment of nested (multi-level) control structures in UML sequence diagram

Abstract:

The COSMIC ISO 19761 method is used in software industry as a contributor to estimation improvements and for comparability across projects. The COSMIC method is based on the identification of data movements but it does not consider the data manipulations. To take into account data manipulations associated with data movements at a detailed level of granularity, the measurement of control structures, also referred to as structural size, has been suggested previously. While the previous work focused on the use of constructs (alt, opt, and loop) for one structural level, the multi-level had not been considered. This work proposes refinements to our previous structural size measurement method through the assessment of the nested (multi-level) control structures in the sequence diagram. This refined method proposes detailed measures in different situations where the three constructs can be nested. These measures can be very useful for the software project planning that requires better effort estimation. A web site case study “Digital-Training Center” is used to illustrate and apply the proposed measurement algorithms.