Chapter 21. Software Metrics

In software engineering circles, we are fond of repeating Lord Kelvin's statement about measurement, “When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it into numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind: It may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely in your thoughts advanced to the stage of science.”[1]

Kelvin is joined by rapidly growing ranks of software engineers and managers who realize that measurement is an indispensable tool. Setting goals and measuring achievement toward them leads to understanding of software and the software process, which in turn, can lead to control ...

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