Hard Rules for Software

Source: The Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne The Age

Victoria's Department of Human Services (DHS) saved itself time and money by using function points to streamline the recent development of Lotus Notes applications.

The DHS used southernSCOPE, a function point-based methodology, developed by the State Government. Government testing has found that projects using southernSCOPE (www.mmv.vic.gov.au/southernSCOPE) are successfully completed, meet business needs, cut budget overrun to less than 10 per cent on average and are value for money.

Working with Total Metrics to track its progress within southernSCOPE, the DHS was able to stipulate what it wanted from the Lotus Notes applications, which were intended to give nearly 40 reception staff at nine offices access to a departmental staff directory, telephone messaging, staff in/out board and other features.

Rather than rushing into development, the DHS, working with developer Groupware Consulting (www.groupware.com.au) and Total Metrics as scope managers, spent some 55 per cent of the project's time in the analysis and design stages and just 34 per cent of its time in actual development. DHS project manager Chris Carter says spending so much time on design (industry figures suggest an average of 35 per cent) paid off.

"What this means is that people cutting code were never sitting around twiddling their thumbs, waiting for management to make up their minds about this or that," Carter says. "That's the expensive part of development. When we went to the Victorian government panel of contractors, quotes were taken on a dollar-per-function-point basis. Starting with a well-defined metric of the size of the application, there shouldn't be any hidden traps. At an early stage, you can say 'That's much more expensive and larger than we had budgeted or imagined', and you can do the project in a much more iterative way."