Mapping SCOPE terms to IFPUG and IT Terminology

The terminology differences between how SCOPE works and how clients describe their Application and Maintenance environment sometimes results in the same word being used to mean different concepts.

To assist the reader and avoid confusion we have provided some guidance to the terminology below. E.g. Clients typically use the following terms: ‘Count’ to mean a ‘Project Count’ (Project Size in SCOPE). Whereas, in the real world, a business initiative resulting in a software development Project can impact one or many applications and each application may have one or more counts of the impact of that Project on the application.

SCOPE implements these concepts but it terminology is slightly different. SCOPE has been developed to be compliant with the IFPUG ISO standard 20976 and the new IFPUG CPM version 4.3.

SCOPE Terminology:

• SCOPE refers to a ‘Project Size’ for the equivalent concept of the typical client term ‘Project Count’. Where the Project Size is the aggregate functional size of all the impact counts for each the application boundary impacted by the Project. Within SCOPE ‘Count’ is reserved for the Work Package impact by the Project on a particular Application Boundary (SCOPE calls this a ‘Count Session’).
• SCOPE assumes that a project may impact transactions and Files in one or more Application Boundaries
• SCOPE assumes that an Application Boundary may incorporate one or more Physical Systems, each of which will need to record and report its impact
• SCOPE allows for each Physical System to have its own Work Package for the Project. This Work Package is measured in a Count Session
• SCOPE therefore allows the user to record one or more ‘Count Sessions’ for each Physical System impacted by the Project in the Boundary. Or if the User wanted they could combine all impacts for the Project into one count session
• Each ‘count session’ records the impact within a single Application Boundary and is linked to a single project. However a Project, may have assigned to it many count sessions impacting many application Boundaries. A project can also have more than one count session for a single Application Boundary. E.g. One for each work package or one or more for each Physical system impacted
• SCOPE recognises that Logical Applications from a User View has an Application Boundary. Therefore the Count Session for an Application will only include functions (transactions and data groups) that are accessed by transactions within that Application boundary. Physical Systems can be recorded within the Logical Application Model as belonging to the Application Boundary
• SCOPE recognises and incorporates the concept that Logical Applications from a User View may incorporate one or more ‘physical systems’ and that one or more Projects may impact these systems concurrently

See: SCOPE Architecture.