Chapter 8. Measuring the technical quality of your software
This chapter covers
- Measuring software quality
- Using non-functional requirements, also known as the code “ilities,” to measure code quality
In previous chapters we’ve looked at a lot of data that you can collect throughout your development cycle to gain insight into how your team is performing. In this chapter we’ll transition from measuring the process to measuring the product by using that data to determine how good your software products are.
The question we’re asking in this chapter is, “Is your software good?” Before you can answer, you must ask yourself, “What is good software?” Once you know that, you can compare what you have to the ideal picture to determine where your software products stand.
At a high level there are only two dimensions to good software:
- If it does what it’s supposed to do —These are the functional requirements.
- If it’s built well —These are the non-functional requirements.
Functional requirements are what differentiate one software product from another. These all relate to what you’re building and how your consumers are interacting with what you’re producing. In chapter 6 we talked about how to track metrics that are product-specific. Metrics around your functional requirements tell you if your software is working and satisfying the consumer.