The COSMIC Method for Measuring the Work-Output Component of Productivity

Abstract

The productivity of a software activity may be defined generally as 'work-output/work-input', where work-input is the effort needed to produce the work-output. In this chapter we describe the ISO standard COSMIC method which was designed to measure a size of the work-output from a software process. Sizes had to be useful for productivity measurement and for effort estimation, for most types of software.