Abstruct-Given the central role that software development plays in the delivery and application of information technology, managers are increasingly focusing on process improvement in the software development area. This demand has spurred the provision of a number of new and/or improved approaches to software development, with perhaps the most prominent being object-orientation (00). In addition, the focus on process improvement has increased the demand for software measures, or metrics with which to manage the process. The need for such metrics is particularly acute when an organization is adopting a new technology for which established practices have yet to be developed. This research addresses these needs through the development and implementation of a new suite of metrics for 00 design. Metrics developed in previous research, while contributing to the field's understanding of software development processes, have generally been subject to serious criticisms, including the lack of a theoretical base. Following Wand and Weber, the theoretical base chosen for the metrics was the ontology of Bunge. Six design metrics are developed, and then analytically evaluated against Weyuker's proposed set of measurement principles. An automated data collection tool was then developed and implemented to collect an empirical sample of these metrics at two field sites in order to demonstrate their feasibility and suggest ways in which managers may use these metrics for process improvement.

This paper presents theoretical woric that builds a suite of metrics for object-oriented design.In particular, these metrics are based upon measurement theory and are also informed by the insights of experienced object-oriented software developers. In evaluating these metrics against a standard set of criteria, they are found to both (a) perform relatively well, and (b) suggest some ways in which Lhe object oriented approach may differ in terms of desirable or necessary design features from more traditional approaches.In order for object-oriented software production to fulfill its promise in moving software development and maintenance from the current 'craft' environment into something more closely resembling conventional engineering, it will require metrics of the process to aid the software management, project planning and project evaluation functions. While software metrics are a generally desirable feature in any software environment, they are of special imponance in the object-oriented approach, since it represents a non-trivial technological change for the organization.The metrics presented in this paper are the first steps in a project aimed at measuring and evaluating the use of object oriented design principles in organizations.

Abstract-With the increasing use of object-oriented methods in new software development there is a growing need to both document and improve current practice in object-oriented design and development. In response to this need, a number of researchers have developed various metrics for object-oriented systems as proposed aids to the management of these systems. In this research an analysis of a set of metrics proposed by Chidamber and Kemerer [10] is performed in order to assess their usefulness for practicing managers. First, an informal introduction to the metrics is provided by way of an extended example of their managerial use. Second, exploratory analyses of empirical data relating the metrics to productivity, rework effort, and design effort on three commercial object-oriented systems are provided. The empirical results suggest that the metrics provide significant explanatory power for variations in these economic variables, over and above that provided by traditional measures, such as size in lines of code, and after controlling for the effects of individual developers.

This paper presents theoretical woric that builds a suite of metrics for object-oriented design.In particular, these metrics are based upon measurement theory and are also informed by the insights of experienced object-oriented software developers. In evaluating these metrics against a standard set of criteria, they are found to both (a) perform relatively well, and (b) suggest some ways in which Lhe object oriented approach may differ in terms of desirable or necessary design features from more traditional approaches.In order for object-oriented software production to fulfill its promise in moving software development and maintenance from the current 'craft' environment into something more closely resembling conventional engineering, it will require metrics of the process to aid the software management, project planning and project evaluation functions. While software metrics are a generally desirable feature in any software environment, they are of special imponance in the object-oriented approach, since it represents a non-trivial technological change for the organization.The metrics presented in this paper are the first steps in a project aimed at measuring and evaluating the use of object oriented design principles in organizations.

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