Daniel French was awarded the Honorary Fellow award at this year’s ISMA 2026 on October 22-23, 2026, in Sao Paulo, Brazil. This prestigious award is offered to one member annually for their notable contributions and dedication to IFPUG.
Mr. French has over twenty-five years of experience in a broad spectrum of Information Technology roles including application analyst, developer, tester, project manager, and software measurement and estimation. Additionally, he has developed CMMi and ISO compliant process improvement and software estimation processes.
He has been International Function Point User Group (IFPUG) member and Certified Function Point Specialist (CFPS) since 2000, having attained lifetime CFPS designation in 2020. He currently serves as the IFPUG Board Director of the Partnerships and Events committee (PEC). Prior to his election to the board, Dan served as the Certification Committee Chair after serving as the Certification Director on the IFPUG Board in his previous term. Dan’s actively supported IFPUG for the past 25 years in a variety of positions including being a member of the New Environments Committee (NEC), serving as Chair and Vice Chair, a member of the Conference Committee, and more recently as Vice-Chair then Chair of the Functional Sizing Standards Committee (FSSC).
Along with his service to various committees and the Board of Directors, Dan is a regular presenter at industry conferences related to function point analysis, cost estimation, and performance management. He has authored or co-authored white papers and articles on several software measurement and estimation topics including the application of function point analysis to Data Warehouses, the use of function point analysis in COTS acquisitions and Agile estimating.
Mr. French holds a B.S. in Economics from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (VPI&SU) and is a graduate of the Chubb Institute’s Top Gun training program. Dan’s other certifications include the PMI certified Project Management Professional (PMP) and Agile Alliance Certified Scrum Master (CSM).
The International Function Point Users Group (IFPUG) is a worldwide, member-governed nonprofit organization that helps organizations improve their software development process through software sizing standards. With over 1,200 experts and members in 30 countries around the world, and certifications offered in various languages, IFPUG sets the standard in counting practices and software estimation analysis.