Software Metrics Definition
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Software Metrics
“You can’t control what you can’t measure.” (DeMarco, 1998)
As software systems grow in size and complexity, the need for effective measurement becomes increasingly critical. Software metrics provide a quantitative foundation for the planning, design, construction, testing, and maintenance of software systems. They help engineers and managers to:
- Assess the quality of software products.
- Estimate and manage effort, cost, and schedule.
- Monitor and improve process performance.
- Support data-driven decision-making throughout the software development life cycle (SDLC) (Bhatia et al., 2010).
This chapter introduces the main types of software metrics, their classification, and how they are applied to improve both software products and software processes.
Learning Objectives
After studying this chapter, you should be able to:
- Explain the importance of software metrics in software engineering.
- Classify and distinguish between product, process, and project metrics.
- Apply size, design, data structure, and information-flow metrics to real systems.
- Describe and interpret object-oriented and process metrics.
- Explain how software analytics supports data-driven decision-making in projects.