Software measurement and experimentation frameworks, mechanisms, and infrastructure

Abstract

Software measurement and experimentation provide a cross-cutting foundation for software understanding, analysis, evaluation, and improvement. Effective measurement and experimentation requires a variety of issues to be addressed ranging from goal specification to metric definition to data interpretation. This paper focuses on a subset of the measurement and experimentation issues related to frameworks, mechanisms, and infrastructure. In particular, the paper highlights research issues or results in these areas: frameworks for measurement and experimentation, existing measures, determining appropriate measures, data collection, experimental designs, and infrastructure for measurement.