ABSTRACT
For contract projects, the date of the signing of the contract may serve as the starting point. When a major software project starts is the single most ambiguous point in the entire life cycle. For many projects, there can be weeks or even months of informal discussions and preliminary requirements gathering before it is decided that the application looks feasible. Without knowing the intermediate dates it is not possible to perform really accurate statistical surveys of software schedules. Accurate and effective schedule measurement would include the schedules of specific activities and tasks, and also include the network of concurrent and overlapped activities. Also confusing are gaps and errors caused by overlapping schedules of various development activities. Creeping requirements are one of the major reasons for cost overruns and schedule delays. One of the advantages of function point measurements, as opposed to lines of code (LOC) metrics, is that function points are capable of measuring requirements growth.
