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Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Software Development Metrics : Product and Productivity Metrics

Metrics are needed to understand the level of process performance, project performance and product performance. They are needed to set goals and measure the trend and rate of improvement. Criteria for effective metrics are:
- Simple.
- Keep them to a minimum.
- Base them on business objectives and the business process - avoid those that cause dysfunctional behavior.
- Keep them practical.

Product Metrics


One accepted method of estimating the size of the product is using the metric KDSI (Kilo or Thousand Delivered Source Instruction) or Kilo Lines of Code (KLOC) - how many thousands of lines of code are required for the project excluding the comments. Based on KDSI, a project can be categorized as small, intermediate, medium, large or very large.
- Small <= 2 KDSI
- Intermediate >2 and <=8 KDSI
- Medium >8 and <=32 KDSI
- Large >32 and <=128 KDSI
- Very large >128 KDSI

Productivity Metrics


Another metric that can be used for measuring the productivity of the programmer is counting the number of lines that can be written by a programmer in one hour i.e. the Delivered Source Instructions (DSI) per hour.
Time required for execution of a project(in hours) = Total KDSI of the project/average KDSI per hour.


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