IWSM Presentation

1. ANALYSIS OF THE PER-UNIT WORK EFFORT
AND PER-UNIT WORK COST OF THE
WEB INFORMATION PORTAL ENHANCEMENT –
A CASE STUDY FROM POLAND
Beata Czarnacka-Chrobot, Ph.D.
Professor, Warsaw School of Economics, Poland,
Institute of Information Systems and Digital Economy,
e-mail: bczarn@sgh.waw.pl

2. Problem Statement (1/3)
 This analysis presents a case study on
tender competitition
 …concerning the enhancement of
Web Information Portal (WIP) of
 …one of the largest public institutions
in Poland: ZUS - Social Insurance
 The COSMIC method is used as a software
size measurement method in ZUS
 Work cost/effort per unit
of WBI enhancement
should be measured with regard to 1 CFP

3. Problem Statement (2/3)
In competition one of the 3 potential
developers (D3) offered possibility to
enhance WIP system at the cost of 300
US dollars per 1 CFP
D1
D2
 Other 2 attempted to
prove that this is not
possible at such unit
cost
 According to them,
the unit cost was
underestimated even
several times
D3

4. Problem Statement (3/3)
 Analysis served as a main and sufficient basis for settling legal
dispute between a company D3 and 2 competing companies
 It was also necessary to prove that:
the average per-unit work effort on the level of 16 work-hours
per 1 CFP offered by D3 is not underestimated
and to relate these two attributes: per-unit work effort and per-unit
work cost
D1
D2
D3

5. Aim of the Paper
To demonstrate that:
It is possible to carry out enhancement of the WIP at such per-unit
cost in Polish circumstances
The offer of D3 does not feature the so-called abnormally low
tender price
(as defined in the Polish act “Public Procurement Law”)
This is possible to choose given tenderer (D3)
due to the legal reasons

6. Assumptions for the Case Study (1/2)
Per-unit cost of software development/enhancement
depends directly on
per-unit work effort/its inverse: productivity
difficult to determine - it depends on about 50 factors, e.g.:
size and type of
software
type of project
field of
application
technological environment
(e.g. language generation,
hardware platform and
specific languages)
many other
factors affecting
productivity

7. Assumptions for the Case Study (2/2)
 Documentation delivered by D3:
1) the subject of considerations is the work cost/effort per
unit concerned only size resulting from FUR (NFR were
not considerated in this analysis)
2) Boundary functional size of system: 6500 CFP
3) Type of software: dedicated business application (data-driven),
4) Type of project: enhancement of the existing software
(specific actions not mentioned)
5) PL: 3GL should be employed, in
particular Java/J2EE
6) Hardware platform: PCs.

8. Usefulness of Benchmarking Data (1/3)
 Appropriate resources of own benchmarking data,
…which would allow to determine specific to a given
software organization work effort/cost per unit,
…are not owned by Polish Social Insurance Institution
 This situation is normal in Poland where COSMIC method has
been employed for a relatively short time now
 Usefulness of repositories with general and commonly
available benchmarking data reveals
 The largest repository with such data for
dedicated software development/
enhancement projects (D/EP) with products
measured using the FSM methods is
managed by the ISBSG

9. Usefulness of Benchmarking Data (2/3)
 Current version of the ISBSG repository contains data:
 concerning about 6000 projects
 from about 30 countries
 for software development and enhancement
 normalized according to the ISO/IEC 15939 standard
[„Systems and software engineering – Measurement process”]
 verified and representative of the current technology
 The most important ISBSG report: „The performance of business
application, real-time and component software projects. An
analysis of COSMIC - measured projects in the ISBSG database”,
made with the COSMIC cooperation

10. Usefulness of Benchmarking Data (3/3)
 It analyses for various types of software systems the work
effort per unit with regard to 1 CFP:
• project delivery rate (PDR) = inverse of productivity
 ISBSG report: large business application enhancement projects
(above 1000 CFP) should be treated as development projects
 ISBSG: three key factors determining work effort per unit and
therefore cost per unit :
1) application size 2) generation of
programming
language 3) hardware
platform
4) particular
programming
language

11. Dedicated Business Applications Enhancement
Per-unit Work Effort with regard to 1 CFP (1/4)
 The PDR varies with regard to the software size:
 The productivity median
for BA DP increases (PDR
median decreases) along
with the growth of size
 Economies of scales may
be noted for BA DP
 Work effort per unit
decreases which should
entail decrease of the cost
per 1 CFP

12. Dedicated Business Applications Enhancement
Per-unit Work Effort with regard to 1 CFP (2/4)
 The analysis of PDR based on data from 162 new business
application development projects [BA DP] (1999-2011):
PDR
(work-hours/1 CFP)
3GL Java/J2EE
programming
language
PC
PDR median 24.5 23 23
Minimum PDR 2.7 3 3
Maximum PDR 330.6 139 139
25% of the projects have
14.3 15.8 8
PDR not higher than

13. Dedicated Business Applications Enhancement
Per-unit Work Effort with regard to 1 CFP (3/4)
 PDR values dependent on programming language and hardware
platform (PDR median normalized for 100-200 CFP size):
PC
Java (and similar) 20 ± 10
 If this is possible to consider all 3 key factors, the data should be
treated as initial for which correction coefficients should be applied:
Application size
in CFP
10-50 50-
100
100-200 200-300 300-500 500-
1000
1000+
PDR correction
coefficient
1.2 1.1 1.0 0.9 0.8 0.65 0.5

14. Dedicated Business Applications Enhancement
Per-unit Work Effort with regard to 1 CFP (4/4)
Conclusion no. 1:
Taking into account the adopted assumptions and the
above presented data it should be stated that
the work effort per unit (PDR) of WIP enhancement on
the level of 16 work-hours per 1 CFP cannot be
regarded as underestimated work effort

15. Analysis of the dedicated BA EP unit cost with regard
to 1 IFPUG UFP – indirect calculation (1/6)
 The ISBSG report - limited to the analysis of the unit effort –
not unit cost - with regard to 1 CFP
Is there any report, which analyses
unit cost with regard to 1 CFP...?
 Data for unit cost may be found for the IFPUG/NESMA FSM
and used in order to estimate work cost per unit with regard
to 1 CFP indirectly:
by taking into account dependencies between the
IFPUG/NESMA UFP and COSMIC FP (only examples to
show differences):

16. No.
Author (year)
Sample
size
Formula (regression
analysis)
R2
Number of
CFP for UFP =
100
1. Fetcke
(1999)
4 CFP = 1.1 × UFP – 7.6
(UFP – number of IFPUG
unadjusted function points)
0.97 102.4
2. Abran, Azziz,
Desharnais (2005)
6
CFP = 0.84 × UFP + 18
(UFP – number of IFPUG
unadjusted function points)
0.91 102
3. Desharnais, Abran
(2006)
14 CFP = 1.0 × UFP – 3
(UFP – number of IFPUG
unadjusted function points)
0.93 97
4. Van Heeringen (2007) 26 CFP = 1.22 × UFP – 64
(UFP – number of NESMA
Unadjusted Function Points)
0.97 58
5. C. Jones (2007) - 1 UFP = 1.15 CFP
(UFP – number of IFPUG
unadjusted function points)
- 86.9
6. Cuadrado-Gallego,
Buglione, Domínguez-
Alda, de Sevilla,
Gutierrez de Mesa,
Demirors (2010)
- 1 UFP » 1 CFP
(UFP – number of IFPUG
unadjusted function points)
- 100
The results of conversion differ
greatly - it is not possible to
determine precisely what is
dependency between
IFPUG/NESMA UFP and
COSMIC FP

17. Analysis of the dedicated BA EP unit cost with regard
to 1 IFPUG UFP – indirect calculation (3/6)
 The researchers and practitioners suggest for general
estimation purposes:
1 IFPUG/NESMA UFP ≈ 1 CFP
 Based on the ISBSG report „Software Project Costs” - the
cost per unit with regard to 1 IFPUG UFP:
 for majority of cases: from 300 USD to 1000 USD
 median: 716 USD

18. Analysis of the dedicated BA EP unit cost with regard
to 1 IFPUG UFP – indirect calculation (4/6)
 The work cost in
particular country
 Poland has ranked
among countries
having the lowest cost
of work per 1 IFPUG
UFP (estimated to be
app. 155 USD on
average)
Country Cost per unit (1 IFPUG UFP)
Japan 1600
Sweden 1500
Switzerland 1450
France 1425
Great Britain 1400
Germany 1300
USA 1000
India 125
Poland 155
Hungary 175
Thailand 180
Venezuela 190
Mexico 200
Argentina 250

19. Analysis of the dedicated BA EP unit cost with regard
to 1 IFPUG UFP – indirect calculation (5/6)
 These differences result from macroeconomic factors and
although they get smaller over time, they do remain significant
 The ISBSG data - in over 80% concern projects executed in
countries with several times higher cost per unit (even 10)
 Therefore the cost per
unit of delivering 1 UFP
in Poland should
oscillate around
lower boundary of the
cost indicated by the
ISBSG data (300 USD
per 1 IFPUG UFP)

20. Analysis of the dedicated BA EP unit cost with regard
to 1 IFPUG UFP – indirect calculation (6/6)
Conclusion no. 2:
The cost per unit (1 CFP) of WIP enhancement on the
level of approx. 300 USD cannot be regarded as
abnormally low cost
 The relation between the offered work effort per unit (16 work-hours
per 1 CFP) and cost per unit (300 USD per 1 CFP):
 1 work-day (8 work-hours) would cost about 150 USD, average
monthly cost of work = 3375 USD
 It is fairly high as for Polish conditions - it may comprise
average gross pay of a developer and company’s profit margin

21. Conclusions
 There is no basis to consider the price of 1 CFP offered by a
D3 company as abnormally low tender price as defined in
the “Public Procurement Law”
The offer of D3 developer can be choosen due to the
legal reasons
 D3 company offered attributes close to the lower boundary
value - it is now facing a difficult task to keep to them
 The analysis served as a main and sufficient basis
for settling legal dispute between a company D3
and 2 competing companies – in favour of
D3 company

22. Thank you for your attention.
Any questions?
Beata Czarnacka-Chrobot, Ph.D.
Professor, Warsaw School of Economics, Poland,
Institute of Information Systems and Digital Economy,
e-mail: bczarn@sgh.waw.pl