People can’t control things which they cannot measure. These words belong to a well-known American developer Tom DeMarco. He was right as currently, a lot of development companies use this principle in their work. That’s all about software quality metrics that are applied as quantitative methods to assess the quality of IT services or products.
In the simplest terms, metrics evaluate software features, options, performance, etc. The main goal of a metric is to properly apply the results to plan the budget for expenses and costs and schedule the timeline. Also quality measurements provide the basis for QA, testing, and debugging. Popular metrics include the following methodologies:
- analysis of algorithms
- code lines number
- software complexity
- functional points analysis
- bugs and errors per 1000 lines of code
- testing level
- classes and interfaces
- cohesion, etc
Quality metrics benefits
Why do so many teams use metrics to assess the quality of their products or services? Here’s why metrics are so effective and in-demand:
- Performance is the thing that depends primarily on the time tech specialists spend on completing their assignments. To monitor and boost performance, a managing staff uses special metrics that can identify and prioritize the problems, both emerging and existing.
- Another reason is the need for proper time management. With an effective metric, you’ll be able to monitor the results of work and enhance the entire working process.
- Chief executive officers along with managers use metrics to evaluate how their decisions influence the workflow.
Why are metrics important?
First off, you should make a list of all assessments you do within the company otherwise it makes no sense to say that your development team understands how metrics work and affect the final results.
A rude mistake of most teams is that they put first SDLC instead of putting quality measurement first.
Very often managers find measuring and assessing the workflow, progress, employees just the next boring task in their work. However, don’t belittle the importance of metrics. To make the measurement process interesting and effective, any metric must be clear and cost and time-effective.
What metrics to pick up?
Each team is unique having its own needs. Below are the most well-known methodologies to measure the quality:
#1 — Agile metrics
Development teams use agile metrics to define the ways of improving the entire SDLC. Usually, managers pay attention to team velocity, lead time, cycle time, open and close rates.
Lead time is the time spent for brainstorming, ideas generation, product delivery and development. It’s the period from the beginning of the project to its finish. This time is often reduced deliberately to fasten the time to market.
Lead time includes cycle time. It is taken to develop a software product, deploy it in production, etc. Below is a chart demonstrating the difference between the cycle and the lead time.
Team’s performance is measured by velocity (that is used to schedule sprints or iterations). The major goal of velocity is to assess the time spent on accomplishing the tasks and to design the next projects in accordance with how fast the previous assignment was done.
#2 — Production metric
The scope of work done is assessed by the production metric. Usually, this metric is used to measure the speed of operation and is defined by the following criteria:
- Active days — the time for writing the code, planning, and other small activities. This measurement allows identifying extra expenses.
- Tasks scope is the total scope of code that a developer can produce per year. Tasks scope helps product owners calculate the number of employees needed for accomplishing a particular project.
- Effectiveness/Productivity — the scope of quality code written by developers.
- Code churn — a volume of code lines.
- The time between failure and repair — a failure is something any software development cannot avoid, that’s why it’s important to measure a mean time between such failures and recoveries.
- Apps crash rate is a correlation between a number of times an app crashes and a number of times it is used.
#3 — Security responses
This metric is used to understand how responsive to security and safety the software is. This means that developers evaluate the level of security: the time needed to find out the potential or existing dangers (viruses, breaches, etc.), fix, and develop the remedy.
#4 — Size-oriented measurements
Size-oriented assessments analyze the software quality using a KLOC quantifier. KLOC stands for kilo (thousand) lines of code that determine issues, bugs, errors made per thousand lines.
#5 — Function-oriented methods
A function point is here a core quantifier. It is a measure that demonstrates how much functionality, business functionality mainly, a product gives. This methodology considers user inputs, error reports, and messages, user inquiries, etc.
#6 — QA metrics
Quality assurance and testing are integral parts of any SDLC. There exist hundreds of QA metrics including basic (test cases, written and executed). Calculated metrics are usually executed by a Test Engineer Lead to study the progress of the project. The reports of the calculated metrics help enhance the entire SDLC.
Below are the common testing steps made usually by a team of test engineers:
- Identify the major issues to test, for example, test a tracking system.
- Determine the metrics for testing and the number of test cases to be written per day.
- Assign the task to a tester.
- Evaluate the efficiency of the used metrics.
- Think of where and how to implement the results.
#7 — Customers satisfaction
It assesses the level of customers satisfaction with the services or product that could vary from very satisfied to very dissatisfied (calculated in percent). This information is obtained from users surveys.
Bear in mind, the most precise results could be obtained with the first product release. Once your product is released, you are able to assess the level of its quality. A team can estimate KLOC, defect rate, and what enhancements to make in the next versions of the product.
DICEUS team is qualified in using various software quality metrics. Note that metrics might help you identify the changes that could positively affect the process of software development.
