MIRPUR UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

DEPARMENT OF SOFTWARE ENGINEERING

SE-361 Software Engineering Economics 1

 Scope of Software Metrics
Process, Product and Resources
(Lecture # 06)
CLO PLO
2 3

Engr. Samina Fazilat

(Junior Lecturer)

Date:,

SE-361 Software Engineering Economics 2

 Scope of Software Metrics/1

Cost and effort estimation

 Software cost estimation is the process of predicting the
amount of effort required to build a software system.
 Estimates for project cost and time requirements are
derived during the planning stage of a project.
 Models used to estimate cost can be categorized as either
cost models (e.g., Constructive Cost Model COCOMO)
or constraint models (e.g., SLIM).
 Experience is often the only guide used to derive these
estimates, but it may be insufficient if the project breaks
new ground.
 Many models are available as automated tools.

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Productivity models and measures

 Definition: The rate of output per unit of input.
 Productivity = size / effort
 Productivity = LOC / person-month
 Productivity model based on decomposition to measurable
attributes:
measurabl
e

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Data collection
 Very critical and very hard step.
 What data should be collected?
 How it should be collected?
 Is collected data reproducible?
 Example: software failure data collection
1) Time of failure
2) Time interval between failures
3) Cumulative failure up to a given time
4) Failures experienced in a time interval

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Quality models and measures

 Software quality measurement (Rubey and Hartwick 1968~)
 McCall’s quality factors (1977~), ISO 9126

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Reliability models
 Plot the change of failure intensity () against time.

 Many models are proposed. The most famous ones

are basic exponential model and logarithmic
Poisson model.
 The basic exponential model assumes finite failures
in infinite time; the logarithmic Poisson model
assumes infinite failures.
 Automated tools such as CASRE are available.

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Performance evaluation and models

 Using externally observable performance

characteristics such as response time and

completion rate (Ferrari 1978~)
 Efficiency of algorithms (Garey 1979~)

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Structural and complexity

metrics
Control-flow structure


 Data-flow structure

 Data structure

 Information flow attributes

 Complexity metrics (1979~) V(F) = 5

 Cyclomatic complexity (McCabe 1989)
defining number of independent paths in
execution of a program
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Management by metrics
 Metrics for project control (1980~)

 Metrics related to specification quality

 Metrics for the design model
 Metrics for documentation
 Checking and testing metrics
 Resource metrics
 Change metrics

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Evaluation of methods and tools

 Efficiency of methods (1991~)

 Efficiency and reliability of tools

 Certification test of acquired tools and

components
 Benchmarking

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 Scope of Software Metrics /10
Capability maturity assessment
 US Software Engineering Institute (SEI) model

(1989): CMM grading using five-level scale.

 ISO 9001: Quality systems: models for quality

assurance in design/development, production,

installation and servicing (1991)
 ISO 9000-3: Guidelines for application of ISO 9001

to the development, supply and maintenance of

software (1991)

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 Who Benefits From Measurement
 Managers
 What does each process cost?
 How productive is the staff?
 How good is the code being developed?
 Will the user be satisfied with the product?
 How can we improve?
 Engineers
 Are the requirements testable?
 Have we found all the failures?
 Have we met our product or process goals?
 What can we predict about our software product in the
future?

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 Metrology

 Metrology is the science of measurement.

 Metrology is the basis for empirical science and
engineering in order to bring knowledge under
general laws, i.e., to distil observations into formal
theories and express them mathematically.
 Measurement is used for formal (logical or
mathematical, orderly and reliable) representation of
observation.

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 Two Problem Categories

 Components of a measurement system:

m = <attribute, scale, unit>
 Attribute is what is being measured (e.g., size of a program)
 Scale is the standard and scope of measurement (e.g., nominal,
ordinal, ratio scale, etc.)
 Unit is the physical meaning of scale (e.g., a positive integer, a
symbol, etc.)
 Determining the value of an attribute of an entity.
 Determining the class of entities to which the
measurement relates.

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 Empirical Relations

 Empirical relation preserved under measurement M

as numerical relation

Figure from Fenton’s Book

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 Real, Empirical & Formal Worlds

Measurement

Real Empirical
World World

Scales
&Units
Formal
Modeling & World
Verification Mapping

Mathematical (logical) Model

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 Real, Empirical & Formal Worlds

Measurement
height
Entity A 197

Entity B 124
Scale: ratio
Unit: cm

M(A) > M(B)

Modeling &
Verification Mapping

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 Measurement: Activities/1

 Problem definition
 Defining measurement problem
 Designating set of entities forming the target of
measurement
 Identifying key attributes for the entities
 Identifying scales
 Identifying scales for which the attributes can be
measured
 Forming the empirical relational system
 Mapping entities and their selected attributes to numbers
or values on the scales

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 Measurement: Activities/2

 Modeling
 Developing mathematical (logical) representation of the
entities and their attributes
 Defining the formal relational system
 Mapping the empirical relational system to the formal
model
 Verifying the results of measurement
 Verifying whether the measurement results reflect the
properties of the entities, attributes and relationships

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 Conclusion
 Without measurements there is no way to determine if the
process/product are improving.
 Metrics allow the establishment of meaningful goals for
improvement. A baseline from which improvements can
be measured can be established.
 Metrics allow us to identify the causes of defects which have
major effect on software development.
 When metrics are applied to a product they help identify:
 which user requirements are likely to change
 which modules are most error prone
 how much testing should be planned for each module

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 THANKS

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