Measurement and the software development process

This paper argues that software measurement and the software development process are mutually dependent. Firstly, a high-level view of the relationship between measurement and the development process is taken. This view shows where the various activities within software measurement are positioned within the context of the high-level project stages. The topic of process modelling is introduced, and is used to develop a lower-level view of measurement integration with process. This shows that process models for measurement integration should be sufficiently fine-grained to show when measurements should be collected, how they should be collected, who should collect then, and how the results will be used (the usual lifecycle models are too coarse-grain to achieve this). It is also shown that measurement can be most easily integrated within an automated environment, as measurement collection should itself be automated. The initial work on the integration of measurement with process shows that there are elements of measurement, such as measurement definition and empirical validation, that must be considered outside of an individual project. To facilitate these cross-project measurement activities, the organisational structure within which the individual projects run is examined. To illustrate this, the authors discuss the use of measurement within the organisational model provided by the TAME project [1-3].