What are the Software Metrics for Smoothly Carrying out Development Projects?
A software development team’s ability to create a high-quality software product is dependent on several variables. Whether it’s changing client needs or meeting tight project deadlines, the risk of cost overruns and delivery delays is always there. According to experts, as we intend to add more complex elements to the project, the total scope of the project will expand. As a result of the numerous variables at play, sacrificing quality may become a pain.
Precision measurements are required to prevent well-known engineering mistakes. Therefore, as a viable option, all measurements should be carried out with the assistance of certain metrics.
What are Software Development Metrics?
Software development metrics can be defined as quantitative measures of a particular software product which can guide the management in gaining better insight into software quality, performance, or the efficiency of the aligned software teams.
As a result, we need software metrics to ensure that the software product is of good quality and supplied transparently. Simply said, if you can quantify the items you talk about, you can simply utilize the data connected with them to assess your success rate.
How is Software Development Metrics Prove Helpful?
Looking at software quality as an evaluation or standard, it points out “how good” is that software product. Here we can put forward four vital elements of software quality which can be measured using different metrics.
1. Performance
To check how efficient is the code, or how adaptive is the architecture, along with a good check on the load times of pages as well as other important functionalities.
Metric Used: Load testing, soak testing, stress testing, Application Performance Monitoring (APM)
2. Reliability
To check how reliable is the software, and how likely is it to fail under different circumstances.
Metrics Used: Load testing, average failure rate, production incidents, MTBF, and MTTR
3. Maintainability
To check how easy is the software system to troubleshoot, debug, integrate, maintain, and add new features.
Metrics Used: Code complexity, Static code analysis, and lines of code (LOC)
4. Security
To check how likely are attackers to break into the system, disrupt it, or obtain access to important data.
Metrics Used: Number of vulnerabilities, time taken to resolve them, the distribution of patches, and the frequency and severity of security incidents are all factors to consider.
Also Read: Agile Software Development: Best Practices, Challenges, and Solutions
Software Development Metrics to Implement
Here are a few software development metrics that you can incorporate for smoothly carrying out development processes.
Requirements & Feasibility Analysis
At this stage of the software development process, the project is thoroughly described, and its feasibility is analyzed. To deliver an executable solution, the development team should have a deeper understanding of the project goal and extract all important criteria.
The feasibility study illustrates all of the technical and financial elements that impact the application development process: length, resources, and tasks, as well as team member involvement projections, all of which help with ROI calculations and project cost and profit calculations.
On the other hand, requirements analysis also assists with the early detection of dangers, allowing for the development of risk mitigation strategies from the start.
Team Velocity
In literal terms, team velocity is the average speed at which your team achieves its goal for a Sprint. Because a typical Sprint lasts around 2-4 weeks, calculating team velocity points is a reasonable statistic for determining the team’s efficiency.
Add up the narrative points that were accomplished during that Sprint to determine your team’s velocity. A three-sprint average is typically suggested for determining the team’s velocity.
Runaway Defects
This particular measure determines the exact count of defects or vulnerabilities that were identified when the software was already in production. You can see it as a great predictor of the end user’s quality impression. If it’s increasing, take it as a sign of a low-quality procedure.
Also Read: Benefits of Custom Software Development for Small Business
Sprint Burndown
A Sprint burndown chart is the most effective monitoring measure for showing the project’s health. It helps the team determine how much work remains to be done and if they should speed up or slow down. You may also estimate when the Sprint will be finished. A deviation from the scheduled burndown will signal to the Scrum Master that something needs to be done.
Release Burnup
A Release Burnup is a tool that helps Product Owners prioritize the product backlog depending on the current state of the work. This is a critical statistic for aligning scope with the real release date by either removing non – critical backlog items or attempting to increase velocity by taking suitable measures if the release date has been set and the initial scope has been modified.
Test Coverage
We call this metric actual test coverage, as opposed to the traditional test coverage statistic, which solely measures unit tests. This figure shows how much of the codebase is tested, including unit, manual testing, UI automation, integration, and end-to-end acceptance tests. Looking at the wider picture, it can reveal quality problems in software, like new or in-use components having insufficient test coverage.
For a development company to excel with client projects it is imperative to go ahead and fulfill certain client metrics as mentioned above. Not only does it brings better coordination among teams but also helps streamline software development projects with much ease. Apptread is one such reliable software development service provider for each of your software development needs. Book a consultation today and gain useful insights into our state-of-the-art approach.