Misleading Metrics and Unsound Analyses

  • Authors:
  • Barbara Kitchenham;David Ross Jeffery;Colin Connaughton

  • Affiliations:
  • National ICT Australia;National ICT Australia;IBM Australia

  • Venue:
  • IEEE Software
  • Year:
  • 2007

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Abstract

The authors demonstrate that the recommendations for analyzing productivity in the appendix to the ISO/IEC 15939 standard are inappropriate. They also show that problems with the ISO/IEC advice can be compounded if software engineers attempt to apply statistical process-control techniques to software productivity metrics. They recommend using small meaningful data sets as the basis for productivity analysis and using effort-estimation models to assess productivity rather than productivity metrics.This article is part of a special focus section on software metrics.