The Economics of Software Quality

Chapter 2. Estimating and Measuring Software Quality

Introduction

To predict the future of a software project with acceptable accuracy, it is necessary to measure past projects and also to keep track of the activities of current and ongoing projects. Estimation and measurement are closely aligned, and good historical data is of great value in estimating the outcomes of future software projects.

Productivity and schedule predictions can often be made from observations and benchmarks from similar projects. But quality benchmarks are rare, and therefore most managers and software engineers are not able to predict quality with anything that approaches accuracy. Indeed, a common reason for both cancelled projects and litigation is that of excessive ...