Calculation and use of an environment's characteristic software metric set
Victor Robert Basili, Richard W. Selby · International Conference on Software Engineering · 1985
Since both cost/quality goals and production environments differ, this study presents an approach for customizing a characteristic set of software metrics to an environment. The approach is applied in the Software Engineering Laboratory (SEL), a NASA Goddard production environment, to 49 candidate process and product metrics of 652 modules from six (51,000 - 112,000 line) projects. For this particular environment, the method yielded the characteristic metric set {source lines, fault correction effort per executable statement, design effort, code effort, number of I/O parameters, number of versions}. The uses examined for a characteristic metric set include forecasting the effort for development, modification, and fault correction of modules based on historical data.