TRACKING THE 'LIFE CYCLE TRAJECTORY': METRICS AND MEASURES FOR CONTROLLING PRODUCTIVITY OF COMPUTER AIDED SOFTWARE ENGINEERING (CASE) DEVELOPMENT

Abstract

This paper proposes a new vision for the measurement and management of development productivity related to computer aided software engineering (CASE) technology. We propose that productivity be monitored and controlled in each phase of software development life cycle, a measurement approach we have termed life cycle trajectory measurement. Recent advances in CASE technology that make low cost automated measurement possible have made it feasible to collect life cycle trajectory measures. We suggest that current approaches for productivity management involve the use of static metrics that are available only at the beginning and end of the project. Yet the depth of the insights needed to make proactive adjustments in the software development process requires monitoring the range of activities across the entire software development life cycle. This can only be accomplished with metrics that can measure performance parameters in each phase of the life cycle. We develop metrics that have the ability to measure and estimate software outputs from each intermediate phase of the development life cycle. These metrics are based on a count of the objects and modules that are used as building blocks for application development in repository object-based CASE environments. The viability of such object-based metrics for life cycle trajectory measurement has been empirically tested for the software construction phase using project data generated in Integrated CASE development environments.