What is Software Metrics?

Software Metrics is result from the measurement of the development, operation and maintenance of software in order to supply meaningful and timely management information. Some measurement methods focus on the sizing of the process (person month) while others on the software product and quantify aspects such as size (lines of code), quality (defect count), complexity, reuse, etc. Most of these methods are quite narrow in their focus as the metrics collected do not easily translate to other areas of software development and software product.

We are focusing on Functional Size Measurement (FSM), which measures software by quantifying the functional user requirements that the software delivers. It does this by looking at the software from the user's perspective and calculating the amount of functionality to be delivered. FSM's advantage is that it's metric may be applied to both the software process as well as the software product. 

The most commonly used functional sizing technique is the IFPUG Function Point Analysis technique that has a ‘Function Point’ as its unit. The IFPUG technique is based on a method developed in the USA by Alan Albrecht from IBM in the late 1970s.