Charles Symons

Founder of COSMIC and creator of the Mark II Function Point

Charles Symons has 45 years experience in the use of computers for business and scientific purposes, in both public and private sectors, in all the major disciplines of the Information Systems function.

He is currently joint project leader of COSMIC, the Common Software Measurement International Consortium (www.cosmicon.com). COSMIC is an informal grouping of software metrics experts who developed a method of software functional size measurement applicable to business, real-time and infrastructure software. The COSMIC-FFP was the first such ‘new generation’ method to become an International Standard (ISO/IEC 19761:2003). COSMIC is increasingly used as a first choice measurement method, and is particularly suited to managing predictability for Agile teams.

Before leading the development of COSMIC-FFP, Charles invented the Mk II Function Point Analysis technique for sizing software requirements, which became the UK Government mandated method for software sizing and estimating. Charles is also the author of Software Sizing and Estimating (Wiley, 1991).

Keywords
COSMIC; FPA; MkII; Estimating; predictability; Software Size Measurement; Agile.