Understanding developer and manager perceptions of function points and source lines of code

Although function points (FP) are considered superior to source lines of code (SLOC) for estimating software size and monitoring developer productivity, practitioners still commonly use SLOC. One reason for this is that individuals who fill different roles on a development team, such as managers and developers, may perceive the benefits of FP differently. We conducted a survey to determine whether a perception gap exists between managers and developers for FP and SLOC across several desirable properties of software measures. Results suggest managers and developers perceive the benefits of FP differently and indicate that developers better understand the benefits of using FP than managers.