Keynote speech 1: Measurement in software engineering: Engineering practices or placebos

Measurement is fundamental to science, engineering and fair trade. When software design and decision-making are not based on sound and standardized measurements, is computer science a science, is software engineering an engineering practice, and are software stakeholders getting fair deals? Over the years, a large variety of ‘software metrics’ have been proposed to practitioners, including Storypoints and Velocity, the most widely known metrics within the Agile community. Most such software metrics claim to tackle a number of issues at once, but are they sound engineering solutions addressing the fundamentals of measurements or are they placebos for quickly placating perceptions? Are they designed to ensure accountability or do they lead rather to unaccountability? Which ones of the current software metrics are based on sound engineering foundations and which ones will withstand the test of time?