Design Complexity Metrics For TheMASCOT 3 Design Method
John F. Moses · WIT transactions on information and communication technologies · 1970
The importance of system design products has recently been recognised, [1], p.46, their maintainability, reusability and testability having been identified as being at least as important as that of the corresponding implemented code. Hence, investigation of complexity of software development products at architectural design (A.D.) and detailed design (D.D.) may be viewed as important because of the relationship between complexity and maintainability see [2], [3], [4] and [1]. This paper demonstrates that, in general, there exists a highly significant positive correlation between the complexity of MASCOT 3 [5] modules (as measured by a suitable complexity metric) at architectural design (A.D.) and the complexity of the corresponding MASCOT 3 modules at detailed design (D.D.) (also measured by a suitable complexity metric). It follows that, to a large extent, the complexity of a MASCOT 3 module, at D.D. and implementation, can be determined from A.D.. Hence, armed with such knowledge it becomes possible to control complexity of MASCOT 3 modules and hence to assist in ensuring the maintainability of the implemented software, in addition to other quality factors dependent on module complexity. Transactions on Information and Communications Technologies vol 11, © 1995 WIT Press, www.witpress.com, ISSN 1743-3517 182 Software Quality Management