Establishing Software Measurement Programs

it is to succeed. or successful product and process definition, implementation, and evolution, developers increasingly look to software measurement techniques.1-3 We typically regard measurement as essential for project—but less so for process— management. Yet without adequate quantitative support, we can’t readily comprehend, much less master, the complexities of software structure, testability, quality, reliability, or safety. Only with measurement-based frameworks can we approach anything like an engineering ethos in activities vital to effective software production that are, all too often, ill-defined and poorly managed. Measurement programs can facilitate a true engineering approach to software development, and specifically software product and process improvement, giving developers a competitive advantage over those who pursue more traditional approaches. Measurement programs can also ensure that welldefined measurement frameworks emerge, along with rigorously defined measures and meaningful data. (We prefer the term measures rather than metrics, as metric connotes a generic distance measure in the mathematical and physical sciences.)