UML point model for mobile game effort estimation / Nur Ida Aniza Rusli

Mobile game continues to grow in the gaming industry. Due to its popularity and the emergence of 3D model, it demands richer, colourful and more advanced mobile components in order to deliver fun and long-term game play. This causes more complex range of functionality required to be included in the requirements and may lead to difficulties on accurate estimation of the effort of mobile game application. Software effort estimation is a backbone of software project. It estimates the number of person required, project duration and development cost. Functional size measurement is a widely accepted method in estimating the size of project and the software effort. However, the existing estimation models are designed before the emergence of mobile application. Therefore, there is possibility that these models unable to cater newer software technologies especially the mobile game application requirements. Additionally, the effort of mobile game can be very difficult to measure accurately since there is no standard procedure have been proposed especially in utilizing the concept of functional size to mobile game application. The estimation of mobile game can be varied by factors such as mobile platforms, devices or game requirements. Estimation based on requirements could produce precise results as it able to cater complex functionalities regardless to any programming code, technology or development process. UML Point is proposed as a functional size method for estimating the size of mobile game, which the obtained functional size can be used in the effort estimation activity. The proposed UML Point model integrates the concept of UML model and IFPUG Function Point Analysis. The utilization of both concepts leads to the transformation of the new set of procedure to assist practitioner specifically in mobile game effort estimation. UML model is used due to its ability to capture the complex functional requirements of mobile game, whereas IFPUG Function Point Analysis is adapted because it is capable in providing a precise estimation in many software projects. The input to the UML Point consists of use case diagram, component diagram, class diagram, sequence diagram and UML stereotypes for grouping certain elements in mobile game.