A structured analysis of the new ISO standard on functional size measurement-definition of concepts

The ISO 14143-1 document is the first in a set of five documents constituting the international standard on functional size measurement for software. This first document specifies a mandatory set of concepts required for functional size measurement and tackles it from a measurement method perspective. This is a unique perspective in contrast to other standardization work in progress on software. This article presents a structured analysis of ISO 14143-1 to analyze its completeness and mapping to measurement principles and related concepts. This analysis is carried out following the structure of a process model for software engineering measurement methods, identifying the distinct steps involved, from the design of a measurement method to the exploitation of the measurement results. For each step of this process model, the proposed analysis identifies the strengths and weaknesses of the ISO 14143-1 standard. A summary of its key strengths and weaknesses is presented in the conclusion.