A question from my email archives:

“I’ve been tasked with defining metrics for software quality. Do you have a recommended book or reference to point me in the right direction?”

The classic book on software metrics is Kan’s Metrics and Models in Software Quality Engineering. It’s not for the casual reader, however.

More approachable is Putnam and Myer’s more recently published Five Core Metrics: The Intelligence Behind Successful Software Management.

I also suggest reading Cem Kaner’s work on metrics. Kaner points out that most of measures we take on software projects don’t actually measure what we think we’re measuring. His paper “Software Engineering Metrics: What Do TheyMeasure and How Do We Know?” is a good summary. On a related note, Doug Hoffman provides examples of how measurement can be fraught with peril in his paper “The Darker Side of Metrics.”

Since the variations of possible metrics you could take are almost infinite, I recommend Vic Basili’s Goal-Question-Metric approach to ensure you choose the metrics that are best suited to your particular context.

For using metrics to communicate, I suggest my own article (co-authored with Kathy Iberle), “Show and Tell.”

We were heavily influenced by Tufte’s Visual Display of Quantitative Information. While not specifically about software, I highly recommend his book. I also recommend the classic How to Lie with Statistics by Huff.