What metrics can be used in software development?

Q: What metrics can be used in software development? A: Metrics refer to statistical process control. The idea of statistical process control is a great one, but it has but a limited use in software development. On the negative side, statistical process control works only with processes that are sufficiently well defined and unvaried, so that they can be analyzed in terms of statistics. Still on the negative side, the problem is, most software development projects are NOT sufficiently well defined and NOT sufficiently unvaried. On the positive side however, one CAN use statistics. Statistics are excellent tools that project managers can use. Statistics can be used, for example, to determine when to stop testing, i.e. test cases completed with certain percentage passed, or when bug rate falls below a certain level. But, if these are project management tools, why should we label them quality assurance tools?

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