Technical Metrics for Software
By its nature, engineering is a quantitative discipline. Engineers use numbers to help them design and assess the product to be built. Until recently, software engineers had little quantitative guidance in their work - but that's changing. Technical metrics help software engineers gain insight into the design and construction of the products they build. The following topic categories are considered:
General Introduction
Metrics Resources
Technical Metrics
Object-Oriented Metrics
Books
General Introduction
History of Software Measurement
A book-length dissertation by Horst Zuse. Includes a voluminous bibliography on metrics.
A Software Metrics Primer
A useful introduction by Karl Wiegers.
Metrics Guide
Presents an overview of the collection, analysis, and reporting of software metrics. Also many links to metircs resources.
Metrics Roadmap
A guide to the metrics field prepared by Normal Fenton and Martin Neil
Software Metrics Briefing
A slide presentation developed by Mitre Corp.
An 8-Step Metrics Program
A detailed discussion produced by SPC.
Classification of Technical Metrics
A detailed classification of technical (product) metrics can be found here.
Ten Metrics Traps to Avoid
A paper by Karl Wiegers.
Metrics Resources
Software Metrics Resources
George Stark has prepared useful information of software metrics inlcuding an annotated bibliography.
Metrics Glossary
A comprehensive glossary of metrics terms. Recommended.
Software Metrics Sites on the Web - 1
A comprehensive set of links prepared by Thomas Fetcke contains pointers to conferences, tools products, training, SPI and other related topics.
Software Metrics Sites on the Web - 2
Contains a wide array of Web resources.
Software Metrics Sites on the Web - 3
Contains a wide array of Web resources.
Software Metrics Forum
A wide variety of metrics resources.
IFPUG Resources
The Intl. Function Point User's Group offers many useful reports and articles.
NESMA
Netherlands Software Metrics Users Association discusses FP in great detail.
Metrics Humor
Count the number of pizza boxes in the lab ...
Technical Metrics for Conventional (and OO) Software
Metrics Information from Horst Zuse
Horst Zuse provides voluminous information on technical metrics.
"A Software Metric System for Module Coupling"
A paper on metrics that describe coupling (a design characteristic) can be downloaded from this site.
Measurement Model
Describes KARMIC - a model for continuous measurement during software product development.
Metrics Taxonomy
An excellent taxonomy of software metrics. Highly recommended.
Design Metrics
A discussion of selected design metrics as well as pointer to other information.
Defect Removal Efficiency
This site has a number of downloadable papers by Linda Westfall on DRE and relate topics.
Software Metrics and Reliability
How quality metrics assist in the evaluation of software reliability.
Object-Oriented Metrics
The Role of OO Metrics
A paper by Bertrand Meyer.
Object-Oriented Metrics
A useful survey of OO metrics. Recommended.
OO Metrics Sites on the Web
A comprehensive set of resources compiled by CETUS links.
OO Design Metrics Bibliography
A print bibliography with 48 citations.
Applying and Interpreting OO Metrics
A worthwhile report produced by NASA SATC.
Books 
There is a surprisingly large number of books that are dedicated to software metrics, although the majority focus on process and project metrics to the exclusion of technical metrics. Munson (Software Engineering Measurement, Auerbach, 2003), Kan (Metrics and Models in Software Quality Engineering, Addison-Wesley, second edition, 2002), Fenton and Pfleeger (Software Metrics: A Rigourous and Practical Approach, Brooks-Cole Publishing, 1998), Zuse (A Framework of Software Measurement, DeGruyter, 1997), and Fenton and Pfleeger (Software Metrics, Brooks-Cole, 1998) have written thorough treatments of technical metrics.
Books by Card and Glass (Measuring Software Design Quality, Prentice-Hall, 1990), Zuse (Software Complexity: Measures and Methods, DeGruyter, 1990), Ejiogu (Software Engineering with Formal Metrics, QED Publishing, 1991), Moeller and Paulish (Software Metrics, Chapman and Hall, 1993), and Hetzel (Making Software Measurement Work, QED Publishing, 1993) all address technical metrics in some detail. Oman and Pfleeger (Applying Software Metrics, IEEE Computer Society Press, 1997) have edited an anthology of important papers on software metrics. In addition, the following books are worth examining:
- Conte, S.D., H.E. Dunsmore, and V.Y. Shen, Software Engineering Metrics and Models,
Benjamin/Cummings, 1984.
- Grady, R.B. Practical Software Metrics for Project Management and Process Improvement, Prentice-Hall, 1992.
- Sheppard, M., Software Engineering Metrics, McGraw-Hill, 1992.
The theory of software measurement is presented by Denvir, Herman, and Whitty in an edited collection of papers (Proceedings of the International BCS-FACS Workshop: Formal Aspects of Measurement, Springer-Verlag, 1992). Shepperd (Foundations of Software Measurement, Prentice-Hall, 1996) also addresses measurement theory in some detail. Current research isdpresented in the Proceedings of the Symposium on Software Metrics (IEEE, published annually).
A comprehensive summary of dozens of useful software metrics is presented in [IEE94]. In general, a discussion of each metric has been distilled to the essential “primitives” (measures) required to compute the metric and the appropriate relationships to effect the computation. An appendix provides discussion and many references.
Whitmire (Object-Oriented Design Measurement, Wiley, 1997) presents the most comprehensive and mathematically sophisticated treatment of OO metrics published to date. Lorenz and Kidd(Object-Oriented Software Metrics, Prentice-Hall, 1994) and Hendersen-Sellers (Object-Oriented Metrics: Measures of Complexity, Prentice-Hall, 1995) offer the only other books dedicated to OO metrics. Hutcheson (Software Testing Fundamentals: Methods and Metrics, Wiley, 2003) presents useful guidance in the application and use of metrics for software testing.
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