Software Metrics and Software Metrology

ALAIN ABRAN , PhD, is a Professor and the Director of the Software Engineering Research Laboratory at Ecole de technologie superieure, Universite du Quebec (Canada). Dr. Abran is a coeditor of the Guide to the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge . He has also been actively involved in software engineering standardization as the international secretary for ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 7 - Software and System Engineering. Dr. Abran has close to twenty years of industry experience in information systems development and software engineering.

Foreword vii Preface ix Acknowledgments xvii About the Author xix PART 1: Key Concepts for the Design of Software Measures 1 1 INTRODUCTION 3 2 FROM MEASUREMENT METHODS TO QUANTITATIVE MODELS: A MEASUREMENT CONTEXT MODEL 17 3 METROLOGY AND QUALITY CRITERIA IN SOFTWARE MEASUREMENT 47 4 QUANTIFICATION AND MEASUREMENT ARE NOT THE SAME! 67 5 THE DESIGN OF SOFTWARE MEASUREMENT METHODS 99 PART 2: Some Popular Software Measures: How Good Are They? 129 6 CYCLOMATIC COMPLEXITY NUMBER: ANALYSIS OF ITS DESIGN 131 7 HALSTEAD'S METRICS: ANALYSIS OF THEIR DESIGNS 145 8 FUNCTION POINTS: ANALYSIS OF THEIR DESIGN 161 9 USE CASE POINTS: ANALYSIS OF THEIR DESIGN 191 10 ISO 9126: ANALYSIS OF QUALITY MODELS AND MEASURES 205 PART 3: The Design of COSMIC -- ISO 19761 229 11 COSMIC: DESIGN OF AN INITIAL PROTOTYPE 231 12 COSMIC: SCALING UP AND INDUSTRIALIZATION 247 PART 4: Other Issues in the Design of Software Measures 267 13 CONVERTIBILITY ACROSS MEASUREMENT METHODS 269 14 DESIGN OF STANDARD ETALONS: THE NEXT FRONTIER IN SOFTWARE MEASUREMENT 281 Appendix A: List of Acronyms 297 Appendix B: Glossary of Terms in Software Measurement 299 Appendix C: References 305 Index 313