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Today, software is a major asset of many companies. Engineering investments are primarily spent for software development for the majority of applications and products. In our fast changing world, a company will only succeed if it continually challenges and optimizes its own performance. Engineering of technical products is currently undergoing a dramatic change. Ever more complex systems with high quality must be developed at decreasing cost and shortened time to market. At the same time, competition is growing and the entry barriers to established markets are diminishing. The result is more competitors claiming that they can achieve better performance than established companies. An increasing number of companies are aware of these challenges and are pro-actively looking at ways to improve their development processes.

Business executives, senior management, project and product managers, software engineers, quality engineers and controllers all need to quantify and prioritize objectives, measure progress, control product quality and manage cost. Every morning you should ask yourself some questions:

The use of measurements in the development of industrial software is gaining importance. Measurements are particularly suited to qualitative and quantitative assessment of the software development process, of the resources used in development and of the software product itself. However, software measurements can only be used effectively if the requisite measurements are integrated into the software development process and if these measurement values are taken at regular intervals. An effective software measurement process produces an extensive series of measurements and thus the need for efficient measurement data management which must include the contexts to enable discourse on the measurements that are taken as well as to provide extensive evaluation options.

This chapter will summarize the quantifiable experiences and wisdom that the two authors collected in their (combined) over fifty years of practical software engineering. Believe it or not: We have measured all the way over these fifty years!. Knowing that it is often difficult to just use plain numbers to characterize a situation, we are also aware that beginners and practitioners need some numbers to build upon — even if their applicability is somewhat limited. We will therefore provide in this chapter concrete and fact-based guidance with numbers from our own experiences so you can use it as a baselines in your projects.

Software measurement is not easy. Many measurement programs fail to deliver actual performance improvements — for numerous reasons, as we showed in this book. You might have further questions on software measurement that go beyond the book or request specific insight.