Mechanisms for Interpretation of OO Systems Design Metrics

A major criticism of metrics for objectoriented systems design has been their lack in generating meaningful feedback information. This paper proposes a data interpretation method based on visualisation of results obtained from the method redefinition metric set. The method encompasses an “alarmer” technique for identifying suspected design problems occurring under certain conditions. We demonstrate how the method provides a mechanism for metric result interpretation, design problem identification and design decision deduction.