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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