Software product metrics

Software metrics are measures of software. Their primary use is to help us plan and predict software development. We can better control software quality and development effort if we can quantify the software. This is especially true in the early stages of development. Research has been done in the area of predicting software maintenance effort from software metrics. In general, software metrics can be classified into two categories: software product metrics and software process metrics. Software product metrics are measures of software products such as source code and design documents. Software process metrics are measures of software development process. For example, the size of the software is a measure of the software product itself, thus a product metrics. The effort required to design a software system may be influenced by how the software is designed, thus a process metrics. In this article, only software product metrics are addressed.