Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) projects have special characteristics that differentiate them from other kinds of software projects. Main difference that affects effort estimation results is high reuse rates of ERP projects. This paper presents our exploratory work to establish an approach to calculate reuse reflective size of ERP projects, which could be a primary input for effort estimation. We explored the usability of COSMIC function points as the base unit and its convertibility to reuse reflective size using reuse levels. We have performed a case study on an SAP Implementation project. We were able to calculate COSMIC size and reuse levels using the documents available for the project. We discuss the results as well as challenges and opportunities in the light of the case study.

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Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Systems evolve at a rapid pace based on customer and industry expectations. As a result, historic project data for these kinds of projects lose their value especially for analogy based estimation methods. In this rapidly evolving domain, function point based methods might provide a sound alternative for ERP effort estimation. This paper presents the results obtained by applying three methods published in the literature in which function points are used as an input for ERP effort estimation. The evaluation of these methods with respect to their measurement processes and estimation errors are presented; their advantages and disadvantages are discussed.

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