Almost every engineering discipline other than software has clear guidelines for measuring processes and products and making decisions based on quantified evidence. Although metrics are seen as powerful tools for understanding and gauging software development, they are usually employed ad-hoc and without clear directions for interpreting the numbers and acting on them. Software development processes are not often followed in spirit due to difficulties in evaluating their benefits and tracking compliance. This results in software that does meet user needs.

This practical book crosses the divide between theory and practice and discusses why essential processes so often fail to deliver quality industrial software. It describes how to integrate processes and metrics to ensure easier and more effective enterprise software development. Metrics-Driven Enterprise Software Development introduces the techniques for building, applying and interpreting metrics for the workflows across the software development life cycle phases of inception, elaboration, construction and transition. This metrics-driven approach guides practitioners at every step of the lifecycle and helps them analyze, design, implement, test and deploy solutions with greater confidence, purpose, and sensitivity to evolving business needs. Effective use of metrics is a key skill for all those involved in next generation software projects. This book is a must read for software engineering practitioners (architects, application developers, designers and project managers), academics, and students and apprentices of software engineering.