Metric is a mathematical number that shows a relationship between two variables. It is a quantitative measure of the degree to which a system, component or process possesses a given attribute. Software Metrics are measures that are used to quantify the software, software development resource and software development process.
Metric generally classified into:
· Process Metric
· Product Metric
Process Metric: Metric used to measure the characteristic of the methods, techniques and tools employed in developing, implementing and maintaining the software system.
Product Metric: Metric used to measure the characteristic of the documentation and code.
The metrics for the test process would include status of test activities against the plan, test coverage achieved so far, among others. An important metric is the number of defects found in internal testing compared to the defects found in customer tests, which indicate the effectiveness of the test process itself.