Techniques of Successful Application of Factor Analysis in Software Measurement

  • Authors:

  • Nadine Hanebutte;Carol S. Taylor;Reiner R. Dumke

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Computer Science, University of Idaho, Idaho, Moscow 83844, USA hane@cs.uidaho.edu;Department of Computer Science, University of Idaho, Idaho, Moscow 83844, USA ctaylor@cs.uidaho.edu;Software Engineering Group, School of Computer Science, Otto-von-Guericke-Universität, 39016 Magdeburg, Germany dumke@ivs.cs.uni-magdeburg.de

  • Venue:
  • Empirical Software Engineering
  • Year:
  • 2003

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Abstract

Metrics in a software sense can be roughly divided into two groups, internal metrics and external metrics. Internal metrics can be measured directly, while external metrics are predicted using internal metrics. Factor analysis is a statistical technique which can be applied to analyze the structure of internal metrics and form a prediction model for external metrics A prediction model generated by using factor analysis needs further validation since factor analysis has a non-unique solution for the factor-loading matrix. The computational methodology to establish a model is presented as well as the validation process. This is illustrated by an empirical study of design metrics and a prediction model for design quality.