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Measurement & Metrics

Three Kinds of Measurement and Two Ways to Use Them

In the testing business, we’ve been wrestling with the measurement problem for quite a while. I think there are two prongs to the problem. The first is the aphorism that “you can’t control what you can’t measure”. The second is the confusion between measurement (which can be either quantitative or qualitative) and metrics, which are mathematical functions of measurements, and therefore fundamentally quantitative, only quantitative. I don’t know if you … Read more

Meaningful Metrics

Over the years, I can remember working with exactly one organization that used my idea of an excellent approach to software engineering metrics. Their approach was based on several points: In summary, they viewed metrics in the same kind of way as excellent testers view testing: with skepticism (that is, not rejecting belief but rejecting certainty), with open-mindedness, and with awareness of the capacity to be fooled. Their metrics were … Read more

What Counts? Redux

In my December 2007 Test Connections column in Better Software, I discussed the problem of counting bugs, test cases, and other things that are mind-stuff, rather than physically constructed objects. I gave a number of examples, but I now have another compelling one. I got the same Christmas gift—Steven Pinker’s The Stuff of Thought—from both my mother and my brother-in-law. (I guess they have me figured out.) In Chapter One, … Read more