Measurement Is No Silver Bullet

by Carol A. Dekkers

When it comes to measurement, the IT industry acts strangely. While other industries depend on measurement, tracking, and control as keys to profitability, the IT industry has yet to embrace measurement on a widespread basis. Even when it recognizes the merits of software measurement, the expectations for it are often unrealistic. Software practitioners want a silver-bullet metric that can answer any development question and do it to several-decimal-point accuracy. Predictably, software measurement doesn't match these expectations and, thus, is usually abandoned before it can deliver a return on investment.