4 | 1999

Introduction
Ed Yourdon

What's Practical About Software Measurement?
Joyce Statz

What Do Our Metrics Mean?
Richard E. Zultner

First, Get the Front End Right
Lawrence H. Putnam, Michael Mah, and Ware Myers

The Secrets of Highly Successful Measurement Programs
Carol A. Dekkers

Back to the Basics: Metrics that Work for Software Projects
Dwayne Phillips


We've covered the topic of software metrics about once a year since we began publishing Cutter IT Journal's forerunner, American Programmer, in the late 1980s. An optimist might interpret this by suggesting that there's always something new and interesting to say about metrics; the pessimist might argue that the only reason we keep talking about metrics is that so few people are actually doing anything about it.