Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!mahendo!wlbr!lonex.radc.af.mil!blackbird.afit.af.mil!galaxy.afit.af.mil!dluginbu From: root@afit.af.mil Newsgroups: comp.software-eng Subject: Re: Software Quality Message-ID: Date: 14 Mar 91 13:05:36 GMT References: Distribution: comp.software-eng Organization: Air Force Institute of Technology Lines: 46 Nntp-Posting-Host: galaxy.afit.af.mil jgautier@vangogh.ads.com (Jorge Gautier) writes: ...some stuff deleted... >By the way, don't be swayed by the advocates of "integrated CASE >tools" and "software metrics"-- these people are not software >developers. 1) This is a pretty sweeping statement. Seems more likely to be opinion than fact. 2) I guess I am to infer that CASE tools and metrics are not useful. I would say that many organizations probably put too much stock in them, but that it not a reason to dismiss them. At the VERY LEAST, metrics can provide important data for trend analysis (where is our process going wrong?). But I suspect that as we get a better grasp on software metrics, we will be able to do more and more with them. You may not agree with any of this, but I refuse to put them aside because they might have been misapplied in the past (or because the advocates are "not software developers"). 3) You have to remember that software metrics is still a young discipline. There are a lot of folks looking into measurement of software -- we've come a long way from "lines of code." By the way, research in software metrics can contribute to our understanding of software in general (see below). >I expect you'll get the inevitable DeMento :-) line of >"We can't control what we can't measure." Here's a good reply to >that: "We can't control or meaningfully measure what we don't >understand." This does not mean that metrics are not useful; only that we still have plenty of work to do in understanding software, so that we (whoever we are) can better measure and control (whatever that means). David R. Luginbuhl Air Force Institute of Technology AFIT/ENG Wright-Patterson AFB, OH 45433 dluginbu@galaxy.afit.af.mil >DISCLAIMER: All statements in this message are false. Boy, was I glad to see this. :--)