Metrics in the development and maintenance of software: an application in a large scale environment

The importance of metrics in software projects is well known. Assessing and controlling quality and productivity in large scale environments requires the establishment of software measurement systems for both products and pro cesses. Product and process measurements should be considered simultaneousl y to assess software projects effectively. Unfortunately, measurement progr ams are rarely carried out extensively in practice or they just provide a l imited set of sample data, This paper reports experience with software meas urement systems gained in a large scale environment and describes an approa ch whereby product and process measurements can be jointly used to assess a nd control project evolution. In the paper, data collection and data analys is techniques are presented to describe a solution for a real organization. Insights into how to make decisions about software projects and set the go als for improvement are made. Copyright (C) 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.