SOFTWARE METRIC TRENDS AND EVOLUTION

Definition - Software Engineering encompasses a process, methods for managing and engineering software and tools. The role of software has undergone significant change over the past half century. From card readers to scanner, from simple equation to artificial intelligence, kilobytes to terabytes, CPU performance from 1 MHz to 6 GHz, 8 bit to 128 bit operating systems. The evolution happened in terms of space, complexity, quality and ease. Legacy applications are attributed with poor quality later with modern applications it’s eradicated. In fact the need for the evolution may even become obvious even before the new system is deployed. With evolving software, the metrics also evolved to measure the quality, not just in terms of documentation but in availability, reliability and robustness of the applications. Process and product measures have been defined to measure the quality of the engineered/developed product. The quality models and industrial standards – Six Sigma, SEI CMMI, ITIL, ISO, PMBOK, Prince2 and other, have changed the estate of software process in the IT world. Each of these help in improving the software development process. In this paper we analyze the metric evolution and the impact it has on software industry. Agile modeling is the current customer sought after model where the metrics are still evolving to suit the customer and market needs.