Guidelines:  Metrics

Topics

• Principles
• A Taxonomy of Metrics
• A Minimal Set of Metrics
• A Small Set of Metrics
• A Complete Metrics Set
  • What Should be Measured?
  • The Process
  • The Product
  • The Project
  • The Resources

Principles

• Metrics must be simple, objective, easy to collect, easy to interpret, and hard to misinterpret.
• Metrics collection must be automated and non-intrusive, that is, not interfere with the activities of the developers.
• Metrics must contribute to quality assessment early in the lifecycle, when efforts to improve software quality are effective.
• Metric absolute values and trends must be actively used by management personnel and engineering personnel for communicating progress and quality in a consistent format.
• The selection of a minimal or more extensive set of metrics will depend on the project's characteristics and context: if it is large or has stringent safety or reliability requirements and the development and assessment teams are knowledgeable about metrics, then it may be useful to collect and analyze the technical metrics. The contract may require certain metrics to be collected, or the organization may be trying to improve its skills and processes in particular areas. There is no simple answer to fit all circumstances, the Project Manager must select what is appropriate when the Measurement Plan is produced. When introducing a metrics program for the first time though, it is sensible to err on the side of simplicity.

A Taxonomy of Metrics

Metrics for certain aspects of the project, include:

• Progress in terms of size and complexity.
• Stability in terms of rate of change in the requirements or implementation, size, or complexity.
• Modularity in terms of the scope of change.
• Quality in terms of the number and type of errors.
• Maturity in terms of the frequency of errors.
• Resources in terms of project expenditure versus planned expenditure

Trends are important, and somewhat more important to monitor than any absolute value in time.

A Minimal Set of Metrics

Even the smallest projects will want to track progress to determine if the project is on schedule and on budget, and if not, to re-estimate and determine if scope changes are needed. This minimal metrics set will therefore focus on progress metrics.

• Earned Value. This is used to re-estimate the schedule and budget for the remainder of the project, and/or to identify need for scope changes.
• Defect Trends. This is used to help project the effort required to work off defects.
• Test Progress Trend. This is used to determine how much functionality is actually complete.

These are described in more detail below.

Earned Value

The most commonly used method ([PMI96]) to measure progress is Earned Value Analysis.

The simplest way to measure earned value is to take the sum of the original estimated effort for all completed tasks. A "percent complete" for the project can be computed as the earned value divided by the total original estimated effort for the project. Productivity (or Performance Index) is the earned value divided by the actual effort spend on the complete tasks.

For example, suppose the coding effort has been divided into several tasks, many of which are now complete. The original estimate for the completed tasks was 30 effort days. The total estimated effort for the project was 100 days, so we can project that the project is roughly 30% complete.

Suppose the tasks were completed under budget - requiring only 25 days to complete. The Performance Index is 30 / 25 = 1.2 or 120%.
We can project that the project will complete 20% under budget, and reduce our estimates accordingly.

Considerations

• The Performance Index must only be used to adjust estimates for similar tasks. Early completion of requirements gathering tasks does not suggest that coding will complete more quickly. So, compute the Performance Index only for similar kinds of tasks, and adjust estimates only for similar tasks.
• Consider other factors. Will future tasks be performed by similarly skilled staff under similar conditions? Has the data been contaminated by "outliers" - tasks which were severely over-estimated or under-estimated? Is time being reported consistently (for example, overtime should be included even if not paid)?
• Are estimates for newer tasks already accounting for the Performance Index? If so, then estimates for new tasks will tend to be closer to the target, pushing the performance index closer to 100%. You should either consistently re-estimate all incomplete tasks, or adopt the following practice from Extreme Programming (XP)[JEF01] - refer to the original estimates as "points", and measure new tasks in terms of these same "points" without adjusting for actual performance . The advantage of "points" is that increases (or decreases) in performance can be tracked ("project velocity" in XP terminology).

If tasks are large (more than 5 days), or there are a lot of tasks which are partially complete, you may wish to factor them into your analysis. Apply a subjective "percent completion", multiply this by the task's effort estimate, and include this in the earned value. Greater consistency in results is obtained if there are clear rules for assigning the percent complete. For example, one rule could be that a coding task is assigned no more than 80% complete until the code has passed a code review.

Earned value is discussed further under the A Complete Metrics Set: Project Plan section below.

Defect Trend

It is often useful to track the trend of open and closed defects. This provides a rough indication as to whether there is a significant backlog of defect fixing work to be completed and how quickly they are being closed.

Defect trends are just one of the metrics provided by Rational ProjectConsole.

Considerations

• All change requests should not have equal weight, whether they affect one line of code or cause major re-design. This can be addressed by some of the following techniques:
  • Be aware of outliers. Change Requests which require substantial work should be identified as such and be tracked as separate tasks, not bundled into a bucket of general bug fixing. If lots of tiny fixes are dominating the trend, then consider grouping them so that each Change Request represents a more consistent unit of work.
  • You can record more information, such as a subjective "effort category" of "less than 1 day" "1 day" "less than 5 days" "more than 5 days".
  • You can record estimated SLOCs and actual SLOCs for each Change Request. See A Small Set of Metrics below.
    
• A lack of defects being recorded may imply a lack of testing. Be aware of the level of test effort occurring when examining defect trends.

Test Progress Trend

The ultimate measure of completeness is how much functionality has been integrated.
If each of your development tasks represents a set of integrated functionality, then an earned value trend chart may be sufficient.

A very simple way to communicate progress is with a Test Progress Trend.

Considerations

A Small Set of Metrics

The minimal set of metrics described previously is not enough for many projects.

Software Project Management, a Unified framework [ROY98], recommends the following set of metrics for all projects. Note that these metrics require Source Lines of Code (SLOC) estimates and actuals for each change request, which requires some additional effort to gather.

Metrics and Primitives metrics

Quality Metrics for the End-Product

From this small set of metrics, some more interesting metrics can be derived:

In-progress Indicators

A Complete Metrics Set

What Should be Measured?

The things to be measured are:

• the Process — the sequence of activities invoked to produce the software product (and other artifacts);
• the Product — the artifacts of the process, including software, documents and models;
• the Project — the totality of project resources, activities and artifacts;
• the Resources — the people, methods and tools, time, effort and budget, available to the project.

The Process

To completely characterize the process, measurements should be made at the lowest level of formally planned activity. Activities will be planned by the Project Manager using an initial set of estimates. A record should then be kept of actual values over time and any updated estimates that are made.

The Product

The products in the Unified Process for EDUcation (UPEDU) are the artifacts, which are documents, models or model elements. The models are collections of things. The recommended metrics are listed here with the models to which they apply: it is usually obvious if a metric applies to the model as a whole, or an element. Explanatory text is provided where this is not clear.

Artifact Characteristics

In general, the characteristics we are interested in measuring are the following:

• Size — a measure of the number of things in a model, the length of something, the extent or mass of something
• Quality
  • Defects — indications that an artifact does not perform as specified or is not compliant with its specification, or has other undesirable characteristics
  • Complexity — a measure of the intricacy of a structure or algorithm: the greater the complexity, the more difficult a structure is to understand and modify, and there is evidence that complex structures are more likely to fail
  • Coupling — a measure of how extensively elements of a system are interconnected
  • Cohesion — a measure of how well an element or component meets the requirement of having a single, well-defined, purpose
  • Primitiveness — the degree to which operations or methods of a class can be composed from others offered by the class
• Completeness — a measure of the extent to which an artifact meets all requirements (stated and implied—the Project Manager should strive to make explicit as much as possible, to limit the risk of unfulfilled expectations). We have not chosen here to distinguish between sufficient and complete.
• Traceability — an indication that the requirements at one level are being satisfied by artifacts at a lower level, and, looking the other way, that an artifact at any level has a reason to exist
• Volatility — the degree of change in an artifact because of defects or changing requirements
• Effort — a measure of the work (staff-time units) that is required to produce an artifact

Not all of these characteristics apply to all artifacts: the relevant ones are elaborated with the particular artifact in the following tables. Where several metrics are listed against a characteristic, all are potentially of interest, because they give a complete description of the characteristic from several viewpoints. For example, when considering the traceability of Use Cases, ultimately all have to be traceable to a (tested) implementation model: in the interim, it will still be of interest to the Project Manager to know how many Use Cases can be traced to the Analysis Model, as a measure of progress.

Documents

The recommended metrics apply to all the UPEDU documents.

Models

Requirements

Use-Case Model

Characteristic	Metrics
Size	Number of Use Cases Number of Use Case Packages Reported Level of Use Case (see white paper, "The Estimation of Effort and Size based on Use Cases" from the Resource Center) Number of scenarios, total and per use case Number of actors Length of Use Case (pages of event flow, for example)
Effort	Staff-time units (with production, change and repair separated)
Volatility	Number of defects and change requests (open, closed)
Quality	Reported complexity (0-5, by analogy with COCOMO [BOE81], at class level; complexity range is narrower at higher levels of abstraction - see white paper, "The Estimation of Effort and Size based on Use Cases" from the Resource Center) Defects — number of defects, by severity, open, closed
Completeness	Use Cases completed (reviewed and under configuration management with no defects outstanding)/use cases identified (or estimated number of use cases)
Traceability	Analysis Scenarios realized in analysis model/total scenarios Design Scenarios realized in design model/total scenarios Implementation Scenarios realized in implementation model/total scenarios Test Scenarios realized in test model (test cases)/total scenarios

Design

Here we see some OO-specific technical metrics that may be unfamiliar—depth of inheritance tree, number of children, response for a class, coupling between objects, and so on. See [HEND96] for details of the meaning and history of these metrics. Several of these metrics were originally suggested by Chidamber and Kemerer (see "A metrics suite for object oriented design", IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 20(6), 1994), but we have applied them here as suggested in [HEND96] and have preferred the definition of LCOM (lack of cohesion in methods) presented in that work.

Design Model

Characteristic	Metrics
Size	Number of classes Number of design subsystems Number of subsystems of subsystems . Number of packages Methods per class, internal, external Attributes per class, internal, external Depth of inheritance tree Number of children
Effort	Staff-time units (with production, change and repair separated)
Volatility	Number of defects and change requests (open, closed)
Quality	Complexity	Response For a Class (RFC): this may be difficult to calculate because a complete set of interaction diagrams is needed.
	Coupling	Number of children Coupling between objects (class fan-out)
	Cohesion	Number of children
	Defects	Number of defects, by severity (open, closed)
Completeness	Number of classes completed/number of classes estimated (identified) Design traceability (in Use-Case model)
Traceability	Number of classes in Implementation Model/number of classes

Implementation

Implementation Model

Characteristic	Metrics
Size	Number of classes Number of components Number of implementation subsystems Number of subsystems of subsystems . Number of packages Methods per class, internal, external Attributes per class, internal, external Size of methods* Size of attributes* Depth of inheritance tree Number of children Estimated size* at completion
Effort	Staff-time units (with production, change and repair separated)
Volatility	Number of defects and change requests (open, closed) Breakage* for each corrective or perfective change, estimated (prior to fix) and actual (upon closure)
Quality	Complexity	Response For a Class (RFC) Cyclomatic complexity of methods**
	Coupling	Number of children Coupling between objects (class fan-out) Message passing coupling (MPC)***
	Cohesion	Number of children Lack of cohesion in methods (LCOM)
	Defects	Number of defects, by severity, open, closed
Completeness	Number of classes unit tested/number of classes in design model Number of classes integrated/number of classes in design model Implementation traceability (in Use-Case model) Test model traceability multiplied by Test Completeness Active integration and system test time (accumulated from test process), that is, time with system operating (used for maturity calculation)

* Some method of measuring code size should be chosen and then consistently applied, for example non-comment, non-blank. See [ROY98] for a discussion of the merits and application of 'lines of code' as a metric. Also see the same reference for the definition of 'breakage'.

** The use of cyclomatic complexity is not universally accepted - particularly when applied to the methods of a class. See [HEND96] for a discussion of this metric.

*** Originally from Li and Henry, "Object-oriented metrics that predict maintainability", J. Systems and Software, 23(2), 1993, and also described in [HEND96].

Test

Test Model

Characteristic	Metrics
Size	Number of Test Cases, Test Procedures, Test Scripts
Effort	Staff-time units (with production, change and repair separated) for production of test cases, and so on
Volatility	Number of defects and change requests (open, closed)—against the test model
Quality	Defects — number of defects by severity, open, closed (these are defects raised against the test model itself, not defects raised by the test team against other software)
Completeness	Number of test cases written/number of test cases estimated Test traceability (in Use-Case model) Code coverage
Traceability	Number of Test Cases reported as successful in Test Evaluation Summary/Number of test cases

Management

Change Model—this is a notional model for consistent presentation—the metrics will be collected from whatever system is used to manage Change Requests.

Characteristic	Metrics
Size	Number of defects, change requests by severity and status, also categorized as number of perfective changes, number of adaptive changes and number of corrective changes.
Effort	Defect repair effort, change implementation effort in staff-time units
Volatility	Breakage (estimated, actual) for the implementation model subset.
Completeness	Number of defects discovered/number of defects predicted (if a reliability model is used)

Project Plan (section 4.2 of the Software Development Plan)

These are measures that come from the application of Earned Value Techniques to project management; together they are called Cost/Schedule Control Systems Criteria (C/SCSC). A simple earned value technique is described above as part of A Minimal Set of Metrics. More detailed analyses can be performed using related metrics, including:

• BCWS, Budgeted Cost for Work Scheduled
• BCWP, Budgeted Cost for Work Performed
• ACWP, Actual Cost of Work Performed
• BAC, Budget at Completion
• EAC, Estimate at Completion
• CBB, Contract Budget Base
• LRE, Latest Revised Estimate (EAC)

and derived factors for cost variance, schedule variance and so on. See [ROY98] for a discussion of the application of an earned value approach to software project management.

The Project

The project needs to be characterized in terms of type, size, complexity and formality (although type, size and complexity usually determine formality), because these aspects will condition expectations about various thresholds for lower level measures. Other constraints should be captured in the contract (or specifications). Metrics derived from the process, product and resources will capture all other project level metrics. Project type and domain can be recorded using a text description, making sure that there is enough detail to accurately characterize the project. Record the project size by cost, effort, duration, size of code to be developed, function points to be delivered. The project's complexity can be described - somewhat subjectively—by placing the project on a chart showing technical and management complexity relative to other completed projects. [ROY98], Figure 14-1 shows such a diagram.

The derived metrics described in [ROY98], which are the Project Manager's main indicators, can be obtained from the metrics gathered for product and process. These are:

• Modularity = average breakage (NCNB*) per perfective or corrective change on implementation model
• Adaptability = average effort per perfective or corrective change on implementation model
• Maturity = active test time/number of corrective changes
• Maintainability = Maintenance Productivity/Development Productivity = [actual cumulative fixes/cumulative effort for perfective and corrective changes]/[estimated number of NCNB at completion/estimated production effort at completion]
• Rework stability = cumulative breakage-cumulative fixes
• Rework backlog = [cumulative breakage-cumulative fixes]/NCNB unit tested

* NCNB is non-comment, non-blank code size.

Progress should be reported from the project plan, which is statused using artifact completion metrics - with particular weight (from an earned value perspective) being given to the production of working software.

If an estimation model such as COCOMO (see [BOE81] is used, the various scale factors and cost drivers should be recorded. These actually form a quite detailed characterization of the project.

The Resources

The items to be measured include people (experience, skills, cost, performance), methods and tools (in terms of effect on productivity and quality, cost), time, effort, budget (resources consumed, resources remaining).

The staffing profile should be recorded over time, showing type (analyst, designer, and so on), grade (which implies cost), and team to which it's allocated. Both actuals and plan should be recorded.

Again, the COCOMO model requires the characterization of personnel experience and capability and software development environment, and is a good framework in which to keep these metrics.

Expenditure, budget, and schedule information will come from the Project Plan.