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A Catalogue of Thresholds for Object-Oriented Software Metrics

Authors:
Tarcísio G. S. Filó
Mariza A. S. Bigonha
Kecia A. M. Ferreira

Keywords: Software Engineering; Object-oriented programming; Quality analysis and evaluation; Metrics/Measurement.

Abstract:
Thresholds for the majority of software metrics are still not known. This might be the reason why a measurement method that should be part of a software quality assessment process is not yet present in object-oriented software industry. In this work, we applied an empirical method to 111 system dataset, identifying thresholds for 17 object-oriented software metrics. Furthermore, we propose some improvements in this employed method. Differently from previous work, we have developed a catalogue of thresholds that gathers a greater amount of object-oriented software metrics, allowing the assessment of methods, classes and packages. Our approach suggests three ranges in the thresholds: Good/Common, Regular/Casual and Bad/Uncommon. Although they do not necessarily express the best practices in Software Engineering, they reflect a quality standard followed by most of the evaluated software. To evaluate our catalogue, we present a case study which shows its application in the evaluation of a proprietary software, in contrast with the developers consensus about its internal quality. Results show that our thresholds are capable of indicating the real panorama of the evaluated software.

Pages: 48 to 55

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2015

Publication date: April 19, 2015

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2519-8394

ISBN: 978-1-61208-449-7

Location: Barcelona, Spain

Dates: from April 19, 2015 to April 24, 2015