Metrics in the software engineering curriculum

• Authors: Everald E. Mills
• Venue: Annals of Software Engineering - Special issue on software engineering education
• Year: 1999

As a recognized discipline, software engineering traces its roots back to the 1968 NATO conference where the term was first used extensively to highlight the need for an engineering approach to the development of software. In the 30 years since that first “software engineering” conference, significant attempts have been made to improve the overall effectiveness of the software development process, and thus reduce the frequency and severity of software project failures. A major part of this improvement effort has been the attempt to develop quantitative measures which can be used to more accurately describe and better understand and manage the software development life cycle. Thus, many software metrics and models have been introduced during this period. In this article, we briefly trace the history of the development of software metrics and models, and then summarize the current state of the field. For discussion purposes, this entire development period is then arbitrarily divided into an Introductory Period (1971–1985), Growth Period (1985–1997) and the Current Period (1997–?). The development of metrics during each of these periods is then related to the treatment of software metrics and models in software engineering curricula during that same period. Our conclusion is that software engineering curricula have indeed reflected the state of software engineering as the work in software metrics and models has progressed. Furthermore, software engineering curricula of the future should reflect the relatively mature state that software metrics have attained, by covering the basic concepts of metrics in appropriate core courses, and more advanced metrics topics in a specialized, elective metrics course.