Bijay Jayaswal y Peter Patton sobre métricas de calidad

Developer publica un artículo sobre métricas de software que tiene la virtud de estar soportado por una visión de la calidad que supera el usual enfoque "especialista". Son destacables tres aspectos: la recuperación de la importancia de los teóricos de Calidad Total (TQM) en los orígenes de la disciplina; la atención dedicada a los problemas de arquitectura (a propósito, los autores entregan también una definición de arquitectura); y la discusión de las métricas específicas al paradigma del análisis y la programación orientada a objetos. Sus puntos principales desarrollados:

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• Historically software quality metrics have measured exactly the opposite of quality—that is, the number of defects or bugs per thousand lines of code.
• Software is a multidimensional concept that can be viewed from many professional and user viewpoints.
• Two leading firms in customer-focused software quality are IBM and Hewlett-Packard.
• IBM has a proprietary measure set, whereas HP uses five Juran quality parameters.
• The Naval Air Systems Command coined the term Total Quality Management (TQM) in 1985 to describe its own quality improvement program. It soon spread worldwide.
• The four essential characteristics of a TQM program in any field are customer focus, process improvement, quality culture, and measurement and analysis.
• TQM made an enormous contribution to the quality of enterprise software in the early 1990s, just in time for the Y2K transition.
• Until recently, most software quality metrics were of an in-process nature; metrics to support DFTS must be applied upstream in the development process.
• Small programs (less than 100 LOC) exhibit 1.5 defects per KLOC. Large programs (more than 1,000 LOC) exhibit 1.5 defects per KLOC. Medium-sized programs often have only 0.5 defects per KLOC.
• Sophisticated software tools for measuring software quality, such as PAMPA, are beginning to appear.
• OOP goals in software reusability tend to enhance software quality as well.