Software engineering, Ada and metrics

Abstract

This paper has described, briefly, how measurement of the software development process can improve the probability that software will be built such that it meets its requirements, is on time, within budget and of the required quality. It is widely believed that the use of Ada has helped these criteria be met, although there are few figures available in the public domain that demonstrate this. It is only when the software development process is measured that we can identify the advantages, and disadvantages, of certain methods and initiate actions to ensure the software crisis becomes a thing of the past. For measurement to be successful it needs to be automated and hence standard definitions are required. The presentation of definitions for size and structure metrics in this paper is a beginning and hopefully will encourage suppliers to incorporate a measurement capability within their software tools.