thesis - Faculty of Information and Communication Technologies ...
thesis - Faculty of Information and Communication Technologies ...
thesis - Faculty of Information and Communication Technologies ...
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Chapter 4<br />
Measuring Evolving S<strong>of</strong>tware<br />
The value <strong>of</strong> measurement is summarised fittingly by the <strong>of</strong>ten quoted<br />
statement — “You can’t control what you can’t measure” [62]. In the<br />
discipline <strong>of</strong> s<strong>of</strong>tware engineering there has been wide agreement on<br />
the need to measure s<strong>of</strong>tware processes <strong>and</strong> products in order to gain<br />
a deeper <strong>and</strong> more objective underst<strong>and</strong>ing <strong>of</strong> the current state <strong>of</strong> a<br />
s<strong>of</strong>tware system [77]. This underst<strong>and</strong>ing is a pre-condition for establishing<br />
proper control over development, with s<strong>of</strong>tware metrics providing<br />
the feedback required to undertake corrective actions <strong>and</strong> track the<br />
outcome <strong>of</strong> the actions [165]. By s<strong>of</strong>tware metric, we mean a quantitative<br />
measure <strong>of</strong> the degree to which a s<strong>of</strong>tware abstraction possesses a<br />
given attribute [124].<br />
Previous research work in the field <strong>of</strong> s<strong>of</strong>tware measurement has focused<br />
on defining a range <strong>of</strong> s<strong>of</strong>tware metrics [46, 117, 165, 182] to<br />
measure different attributes within a s<strong>of</strong>tware system. These studies<br />
are complemented by work undertaken to ensure that the metrics defined<br />
are mathematically valid <strong>and</strong> useful [18, 122, 151]. There have<br />
also been studies [31,42,52,78,205,265] that have shown the applicability<br />
as well as the limitations <strong>of</strong> s<strong>of</strong>tware metrics for measuring both<br />
size <strong>and</strong> complexity <strong>of</strong> a s<strong>of</strong>tware system. Our research effort is based<br />
on this foundation <strong>and</strong> makes use <strong>of</strong> s<strong>of</strong>tware metrics in order to underst<strong>and</strong><br />
the evolution <strong>of</strong> s<strong>of</strong>tware systems.<br />
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