Automating Software Development Productivity Metrics

Abstract

Measurement of software development productivity is needed in orderto control software costs, but it is discouragingly labor-intensiveand expensive. Computer aided software engineering (CASE)technologies -- especially object-oriented, integrated CASE --have the potential to support the automation of this measurement.In this paper, we describe automated analyzers for function pointand code reuse measurement. Both analyzers take advantage of theexistence of a meta-model of the application system, stored withinan object repository, which contains the necessary informationabout the application system. We also propose new metrics for codereuse analysis, including reuse leverage, reuse value and reuseclassification. The state-of-the-art automated software metricsanalyzers are illustrated in the context of an investment bankingindustry application.

Keywords: CASE, code reuse, computer aided software engineering, function point analysis, object-oriented programming, programming productivity, repositories, software costs, software development, software engineering economics, software metrics, software productivity