Software metrics in agile software: An empirical study

Abstract

This paper presents a software metrics analysis of eight object-oriented systems. Five systems had been developed using Agile methodologies and three using plan-driven methodologies; three systems were written in Python and five in Java. For each system, we considered 10 traditional metrics such as LOC and the Chidamber and Kemerer metrics. These metrics were computed at class level. In our study we present empirical results considering systems developed with Agile methodologies and we compare them with previous results for non Agile systems. In particular, we verify that the distributions of software metrics in a software system developed using Agile methodologies does not differ from the distribution in systems developed using plan-driven methodologies. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014.