Best Practices in Software Measurement : How to use metrics to improve project and process performance

Not everything that counts can be counted. Not everything that is counted counts. Albert Einstein This is a book about software measurement from the practitioner's point of view and it is a book for practitioners. Software measurement needs a lot of practical guidance to build upon experiences and to avoid repeating errors. This book t- gets exactly this need, namely to share experiences in a constructive way that can be followed. It tries to summarize experiences and knowledge about software measurement so that it is applicable and repeatable. It extracts experiences and lessons learned from the narrow context of the specific industrial situation, thus facilitating transfer to other contexts. Software measurement is not at a standstill. With the speed software engine- ing is evolving, software measurement has to keep pace. While the underlying theory and basic principles remain invariant in the true sense (after all, they are not specific to software engineering), the application of measurement to specific contexts and situations is continuously extended. The book thus serves as a ref- ence on these invariant principles as well as a practical guidance on how to make software measurement a success.