Summary
In software engineering and development, a software metric is a standard of measure of a degree to which a software system or process possesses some property. Even if a metric is not a measurement (metrics are functions, while measurements are the numbers obtained by the application of metrics), often the two terms are used as synonyms. Since quantitative measurements are essential in all sciences, there is a continuous effort by computer science practitioners and theoreticians to bring similar approaches to software development. The goal is obtaining objective, reproducible and quantifiable measurements, which may have numerous valuable applications in schedule and budget planning, cost estimation, quality assurance, testing, software debugging, software performance optimization, and optimal personnel task assignments. Common software measurements include: ABC Software Metric Balanced scorecard Bugs per line of code Code coverage Cohesion Comment density Connascent software components Constructive Cost Model Coupling Cyclomatic complexity (McCabe's complexity) Cyclomatic complexity density Defect density - defects found in a component Defect potential - expected number of defects in a particular component Defect removal rate DSQI (design structure quality index) Function Points and Automated Function Points, an Object Management Group standard Halstead Complexity Instruction path length Maintainability index Source lines of code - number of lines of code Program execution time Program load time Weighted Micro Function Points Cycle time (software) First pass yield Corrective Commit Probability As software development is a complex process, with high variance on both methodologies and objectives, it is difficult to define or measure software qualities and quantities and to determine a valid and concurrent measurement metric, especially when making such a prediction prior to the detail design. Another source of difficulty and debate is in determining which metrics matter, and what they mean.
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