The Use of Intra-Release Product Measures in Predicting Release Readiness

Modern business methods apply micro management techniques to all aspects of systems development. We investigate the use of product measures during the intra-release cycles of an application as a means of assessing release readiness. The measures include those derived from the Chidamber and Kemerer metric suite and some coupling measures of our own. Our research uses successive monthly snapshots during systems re-structuring, maintenance and testing cycles over a two year period on a commercial application written in C++. We examine the prevailing trends which the measures reveal at both component class and application level. By applying criteria to the measures we suggest that it is possible to evaluate the maturity and stability of the application thereby facilitating the project manager in making an informed decision on the application's fitness for release.