Software Measurement

Abstract

Preface Not everything that counts can be counted. Not everything that is counted counts. Albert EinsteinOur world and our society are shaped and increasingly governed by software. We might accept it or not, but it is happening at this point and will continue further on.It is difficult to imagine our world without software. There would be no running water, food supplies, business or transportation would disrupt immediately, diseases would spread, and security would be dramatically reduced -in short, our society would disintegrate rapidly. The reason our planet can bear over six billion people is software. Since software is so ubiquitous and embedded in nearly everything we do, we need to stay in control. We have to make sure that the systems and their software run as we intend -or better. Software measurement is the discipline that ensures that we stay in control. This is a book about software measurement from the practitioner's point of view, and it is a book for practitioners. Software measurement needs a lot of practical guidance to build upon experiences and to avoid misinterpretations and errors. This book targets exactly this need, namely to share experiences in a constructive way that can be followed. It tries to summarize experiences and knowledge about software measurement so that it is applicable and repeatable. It extracts experiences and lessons learned from the narrow context of the specific industrial situation, thus facilitating transfer to other contexts.Software measurement applies to products (e.g., performance engineering), processes (e.g., productivity improvement), projects (e.g., estimation) and people (e.g., engineering skills). New fields have emerged in the recent years. We therefore show how software measurement applies to current application development, mobile computing, Web design, and embedded systems. Standards have emerged which we use and explain in their practical usage. We will introduce the major measurement standards such as ISO 15939, the product and service quality standards such as ISO 9001, and improvement frameworks such as the CMMI, being the very successful de facto industry standard for process improvement. Measurement theory and underlying methodologies are consolidated and ensure that the foundations of each chapter are correct with respect to mathematics and statistics.Software measurement is not at a standstill. With the speed at which software engineering is evolving, software measurement has to keep pace. While the underlying theory and basic principles remain invariant in the true sense (after all, they are not specific to software engineering), the application of measurement to specific contexts and situations is continuously extended. This book thus serves as a reference on these invariant principles as well as a practical guide on how to make software measurement a success. It is therefore a new book and has not much in common with its "predecessor", "Best Practices in Software Measurement", that after only three years is already sold out. But, we need to rem...

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