Role of software metrics in practical quality management

The goal of software metrics is to provide continuous insight into products and processes. Software product and software development process are tightly coupled since high-quality software products represent the result of a high-quality process. To understand, predict, and evaluate software development and maintenance process, it is widely recognized that software metrics, as an important technique in the static and dynamic analysis, should be integral part of these processes. Software metrics are a critical tool for building reliable software and assessing software quality, especially in complex domains and/or mission-critical environments. The aim of the research conducted in this paper is to determine the existence of different perspectives regarding the impact of software metrics on software quality between participants in software development. The contribution of this paper consists of analyzing the impact that the application of software metrics has on the quality of software and on the overall project success by statistically analyzing data obtained from the survey. Overall, there were 108 respondents from ten countries in the survey. The paper contains a comprehensive survey of code analysis techniques, software metrics, and the analysis of the application of software metrics in practice. Also, importance, influence, and the level of usage of software metrics in IT companies have been considered, as well as the estimation of results significance obtained in the process of measuring software.