Standard software quality metrics

Standard measures of software quality have been set up for AT&T Bell Laboratories. These metrics allow a software project to be followed through its development, controlled introduction, and release to customers. The metrics serve both project and corporate management needs. For project management, they allow more effective management of development effort, and they help to ensure a fast and effective solution to problems that arise at any stage. For corporate management, they provide a vehicle for quantifying the overall quality of software development, for setting quality improvement objectives, and for tracking results. In particular, the metrics provide quantitative information on number of faults, normalized so that corporate results can be summarized and projects of differing size can be compared; the responsiveness of support organizations in resolving problems; and the impact of fixes on customers.