A Method and Tool for Assessing Object-Oriented Projects and Metrics Management

The number of metrics and tools for the assessment/control of object-oriented project is increasing. In the last years, the effort spent in defining new metrics has not been followed by a comparable effort in establishing methods and procedures for their systematic application. To make the investment on project assessment effective, specific methods and tools for product and process control have to be applied and customized on the basis of specific needs. In this paper, the experience of the authors cumulated in interpreting assessment results and defining a tool and a method for the assessment of object-oriented systems is reported. The tool architecture and method for system assessment provide support for: (1) customizing the assessment process to satisfy company needs, project typology, product profile, etc.; (2) visualizing results in an understandable way; (3) suggesting actions for tackling with problems; (4) avoiding unuseful interventions and shortening the assessment analysis; (5) supporting metrics validation and tuning. The tool and method have been defined in years of work in identifying tool features and general guidelines to define a modus operandi with metrics, with a special care to detect analysis and design problems as soon as possible, and for effort estimation and prediction. In this line, a specific assessment tool has been built and used as a research prototype in several projects.