Software Metric

Effective management of any process requires quantification, measurement, and modeling. Software metrics provide a quantitative basis for the development and validation of models of the software development process. Metrics can be used to improve software productivity and quality. This module introduces the most commonly used software and reviews their use in constructing models of the software development process.

Definition of Software Metrics
A metric is a mathematical number that shows a relationship between two variables. It is a quantitative measure of the degree to which a system, component or process possesses a given attribute. Software Metrics are measures that are used to quantify the software, software development resource and software development process.

Metric generally classified into 2 types.
· Process Metric
· Product Metric

Process Metric a metric used to measure the characteristic of the methods, techniques and tools employed in developing, implementing and maintaining the software system.

Product Metric a metric used to measure the characteristic of the documentation and code

The metrics for the test process would include status of test activities against the plan, test coverage achieved so far, among others. An important metric is the number of defects found in internal testing compared to the defects found in customer tests, which indicate the effectiveness of the test process itself.

Test Metrics

The following are the Metrics collected in testing process

User participation = User Participation Test Time Vs Total Test Time

Path Tested = Number of Path Tested Total Number of Paths

Acceptance Criteria Tested = Acceptance Criteria Verified Vs Total Acceptance Criteria

Cost to Locate Defect

Test Cost
=
No of Defects located in the Testing
This metric shows the cost to locate a defect Detected


Production Defect

No of Defects detected in production
=
Application System size

Test Automation

Cost of Manual Test Effort
=
Total Test Cost