Design measurement: some lessons learned

The author extracts from several measurement projects some of the important lessons he has learned about measurement in general and design measurement in particular. He synthesizes from these lessons a design-measurement framework in an attempt to communicate his personal measurement experience to other software engineers. The lessons he has learned fall into three areas: (1) how measurement must be applied in individual experiments or case studies; (2) how measurement can help continuously improve an organization's state of the practice; and (3) why measurement requires automated support.>