Custom software development companies in USA commonly talk of software engineering quality in terms of metrics and measurements. Ever wondered what these metrics are? They indicate the quality of the final output of a running project. The importance of code quality metrics is not limited to developers only. Even entrepreneurs and company managers talk about it. Why? So they can leverage it to prioritize their success and build customer loyalty by maximizing software quality.
Why Must You Leverage Software Code Quality Metrics
A keen understanding of the reasons for its usage will help us understand code quality metrics better. So let us first attempt to answer the question, why do you even need these metrics? Some critical reasons include:
Productivity
Custom software development highly values quick data processing. The faster your software performs tasks, the better. Tracking relevant metrics increases productivity by enabling immediate issue resolution.
Decision making
These metrics simplify estimating decision impacts. C-suite people and project managers of a custom software development company in USA can define precise objectives and set priorities. They avoid impulsive decisions and make strategic compromises to optimize projects.
Data sorting
Leverage these code quality metrics to reduce misunderstandings and ambiguities. This will help reduce the complexities of large projects. Organizing your software provides objective information.
Priorities
Effective communication helps managers track, identify, prioritize, and address project issues.
Progress management
Related metrics will help you keep the software development project on track. It will give you better control over your project progress and the results obtained. You can also gauge your software status, its quality, and track changes made.
Management strategy
You can instantly identify, prioritize, control, and estimate some risks. But other risks might come undetected. By implementing code quality metrics in a custom software development, you can manage such risks and resolve them, avoiding future costly solutions. Further, they can also help you determine technical errors to elevate the quality of the technical parts of your project.
Code Quality Metrics Importance In Software Development
Today, there is no online niche where you will not face stiff competition. Each company must fight with others to stay above the curve. They must try to convert every user or customer that visits their website. One way to do this is to continuously improve software quality and service level. Hence, a customized software development company must leverage code quality metrics to facilitate this.
Quality attracts customers. But quality cannot be limited only to software development. It applies to all associated aspects of your application, website, maintenance and support, chatbot, etc. When you achieve quality, you attract and retain customer attention. So how do you check if your software passes the test for quality? By leveraging code quality metrics. With these metrics, you can check different aspects of software quality like
Reliability
Use it to analyze software quality. Identify the number of defects present by testing your software performance. You must check to see how long your software will run without crashing as you keep increasing its load. To ensure software robustness, you must have a superior-quality codebase with a very low defect count.
Maintainability
Use the code quality metrics to analyze the codebase. You will gain important insights into the structure and size of your software. Further, they will also help analyze its complexity and consistency. This data will make it easy to check for software testability and understandability.
Portability
Test your software on various platforms, using available methods despite tool limitations. As a customized software development company, you are aware of them. Use them to test the code on different platforms during the software development process. However, start the testing during the software development lifecycle.
Reusability
Leverage metrics to measure code interdependencies. This will help you to understand whether you can reuse codes again. Fewer intermediaries mean the code is more modular. Hence, you can reuse them easily.
Which Code Quality Metrics To Choose
To understand this you must know the different types of metrics you can implement. Then create your suite of metrics depending on your vision, services offered, goal, etc. Some approaches commonly implemented by top custom software development companies in usa include:
Quality Metrics
Refine the development process using agile metrics. They take into account variables like lead and cycle time, velocity, and the ratio of open to closed tasks.
Lead time measures the duration from brainstorming to project finalization. Implement agile metrics to reduce this lead time. This will result in quicker product launches. It will also allow you to capture consumer interest and enhance their loyalty by reducing wait times.
The cycle time forms a part of the lead time. It spans the entire scope from the commencement of development to its completion. Here, cycle time forms a part of lead time.
Velocity refers to the timeframe required to develop the project. It facilitates implementing code quality metrics to analyze the previous releases and plan accordingly.
Production Metrics
Use these metrics to evaluate developer work volume. Further, it will help you to analyze their productivity and speed. Some essential indicators of the production code quality metrics include:
Active Days
This refers to those days that are dedicated solely to coding. It excludes associated minor tasks like planning, revealing hidden costs, etc.
Failure and Repair Time
All new software projects encounter bugs. Hence, you must monitor the time spent on resolutions. This will reduce the time taken by your developers to complete the development.
Productivity and Task Scopes
Measuring the productivity of a customized software development company is a challenging exercise. Assess productivity by the code volume each developer produces. Also, leverage other data that aid in project planning. like the annual code volume.
Code churn
This measures the volume of code that developers modify within the code. The less the code churn, the better will be the software quality.
Security Response Metrics
These metrics are crucial. They ensure product security. An increase in the rising frequency of cyber-attacks makes it mandatory for developers to swiftly identify and mitigate security threats.
Dependencies Age
One crucial way to maintain software quality is to keep updating dependencies frequently. Ensuring all dependencies work properly is another important code quality metrics that developers must integrate.
Size-oriented measurements
Keeping track of size-oriented metrics like KLOC helps provide insights into code size and accuracy. They help calculate code size and determine bugs, errors, and costs per 1000 lines of code written.
Function-Oriented Methods and Defect Metrics
You can use this approach to gauge the business functionality that a software is likely to provide. While this is the main quantifier, it also uses other information like user inputs and requests, error messages, reports, user requests, etc. Hence, you must leverage them well to assess software business applicability.
Pull Requests
Learn about project complexity and team dynamics by capitalizing on pull requests. Some indicators for pull requests include:
- Those that did not pass the test suite
- Those that broke the build
- Rejected and merged requests
- Number of pull request comments etc
Generally, the higher the project complexity, the higher the pull request value. Hence as a premier customized software development company, you must ensure an optimum pull metrics value that is neither high nor small.
QA metrics
Alternatively, QA metrics are used to measure software quality. Since quality is subjective, you must measure it using different indicators like:
- Accurately identifying the main issues for testing
- Collaborating with a code quality metrics expert
- Testing critical aspects of your software
- Calculating the efficiency of the metrics
- Making a note of the required changes
- Improving the aspects that require a change
QA metrics play a critical role in improving your project life cycles. Hence, you must include them in your code quality metrics array.
Defect metrics
This is an important indicator of software quality. You must keep track of:
- The different stages at which the defects arise
- The number of generated defects reports
- Time taken by a customized software development company to identify and eliminate the defects
- The defect density
Hence, the defect metrics help provide critical insights into software quality. It will also highlight areas for improvement and guide your efforts to enhance the development process and end product quality.
Customer satisfaction metrics
The happier the client, the better will be your future business prospects. Hence, use these metrics to gauge your customer loyalty based on their satisfaction levels. Here, you can gather information through client polling and calculate the result in percentage.
Gathering information based on the first product release will help increase its accuracy. Developers can identify required improvements much better.
Conclusion
Code quality metrics help identify and improve software quality and reduce the product release cycle. Hence a customized software development company must mandatorily implement them in their software development lifecycles.
