Design Quality Metrics

Abstract

This paper describes a set of metrics that can be used to measure the quality of an object-oriented design in terms of the interdependence between the subsystems of that design. Designs which are highly interdependent tend to be rigid, unreusable and hard to maintain. Yet interdependence is necessary if the subsystems of the design are to collaborate. Thus, some forms of dependency must be desirable, and other forms must be undesirable. This paper proposes a design pattern in which all the dependencies are of the desirable form. Finally, this paper describes a set of metrics that measure the conformance of a design to the desirable pattern.