All engineering disciplines other than software rely on quantitative approaches to design their products, organize the production process, and assess the results. Software engineering too can benefit from measuring relevant properties of its products and processes.
Measurements are not an end in themselves; they must be related to broader goals of software engineering:
Purpose of software measurements:
The
purpose of software measurements is to provide quantitative assessments
or predictions of properties of software products and
processes
For any
numerical measure that we propose we must have precise information on
four properties: coverage, trustworthiness, relevance, theory.
Desirable features of software measurements:
Any
quantitative report on software products or processes should satisfy the
following properties:
- Coverage:
include a definition of what is being measured, sufficient to enable
repetition of the measurements.
- Trustworthiness:
include an estimate of how much the results can be believed, in
particular of their precision (expected variations in case of
repetition).
- Relevance:
specify interesting properties of software products or processes on
which the measurement may provide insight.
- Theory:
include arguments backing the statement of
relevance.