Sizing Software Application Generators: A Case Study of the SimSE Educational Games Generator for Software Engineering Students

RésuméAbstract

There is no published evidence that reports the functional size results for both an application generator and a set of generated applications under one consistent measurement rationale. This gap is particularly visible for serious games and educational simulation portfolios, which one generator can produce multiple game instances. Measuring the generator itself is important for maintenance and evolution planning, because changes in the generator can affect all generated applications. This paper reports on the functional sizing of an application generator and a set of generated applications. Using COSMIC function points (CFP) – ISO 19761 – this study sized the functional user requirements of the 2024 SimSE educational game portfolio, including its (i) game generator, (ii) shared analyzer tool, and (iii) six generated educational games. Overall, the size of the 2024 SimSE portfolio reaches 853 CFP. These results provide an empirical baseline for the functional sizing of educational game generators and their products, and support future work on CFP-based effort estimation and evolution planning for SimSE-like portfolios as well as replication studies.

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CiterCite

@inproceedings{guo2026sizing,
  title = {Sizing Software Application Generators: A Case Study of the SimSE Educational Games Generator for Software Engineering Students},
  author = {Ling Guo and Sion Israel Sion and Alain Abran and Monica Villavicencio and J. M. Desharnais},
  booktitle = {IWSM 2026 (main conference)},
  year = {2026}
}

HistoriqueHistory

1. 2026Accepté et présenté à IWSM 2026Accepted and presented at IWSM 2026