The independence of software metrics taken at different life-cycle stages

Over the past few years a large number of software metrics have been proposed and, in varying degrees, a number of these metrics have been subjected to empirical validation which demonstrated the utility of the metrics in the software development process. Attempts to classify these metrics and to determine if the metrics in these different classes appear to be measuring distinct attributes of the software product are studied. Statistical analysis is used to determine the degree of relationship among the metrics.