Transactions and paths: Two use case based metrics which improve the early effort estimation

The fact that Albrecht´s function point method must be frequently improved or adjusted to suit new development contexts shows that there is a need for a new approach to early estimate effort. Such approach should reduce the estimation error and it is convenient for it to be based on use cases. The authors defined two simple metrics which capture two key aspects of software applications, size and complexity, which are called transactions (T) and paths (P). Also, in order to demonstrate that it is possible to reduce the error of effort estimation using these two new metrics, a case study was developed.