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Software Engineering: Analysis and Design - CSE3308 Software Metrics Lecture Outline Definitions What should we measure? Measuring Size Lines of Code Function Points Software Cost Estimation COCOMO A Quote Another Quote What is a Software Metric? A metric is a measurement of some aspect of the software product or the software process We take metrics for a variety of reasons to measure the quality of a product to assess the productivity of the people building the product to assess the benefits (productivity and quality) of new software tools to form a baseline so we can estimate for new tools to help justify requests for new tools or additional training The Need For Software Metrics Software Development in general has excessive costs (especially in maintenance) low productivity poor quality lack of standards Reasons being that we fail to: set measurable targets measure the real costs in projects quantify the quality properly evaluate new tools and techniques Types of Metrics Productivity Metrics focus on the output of the software engineering process Quality Metrics focus on the conformance of the software to the implicit and explicit user requirements (fitness for use) Technical Metrics focus on the character of the software, e.g. coupling and cohesion Size-oriented Metrics direct measures of the output and quality of the SE process Function-oriented Metrics indirect measures of the output and quality of the SE process Human-oriented Metrics information about the method by which people build and use systems External versus Internal Metrics We want to be able to measure external aspects like: Maintainability Reliability Portability Useability These things are very difficult to measure directly So we develop internal measures which are theoretically correlated with the aspect of the software which we wish to measure Internal Metrics To be a valid measure of an external aspect: the internal metric must be measured accurately there must be a relationship between wha