Software Functional Complexity Measurement with the Task Complexity Approach

This research investigates software functional complexity, which is loosely defined as the difficulties arising from t he functionalities of software, or problem complexity. Software is considered as a task. Therefore, software complexity should be analysed and measured by methods and models of task complexity. Numerous measurement methods (metrics) have been proposed to measure software complexity, but these have been criticized for their lack of a theoretical model which would serve as a guide for measurement methods. Researchers are now in urgent need of such a model. To fill this need, we propose Wood's task complexity model in this paper as a theoretical model which will make it possible to both capture and quantify complexity. Wood's model analyzes task complexity in three dimensions: component complexity, coordinate complexity and dynamic complexity. We use the first two dimensions of the model to analyze software complexity at an early phase of the software lifecycle (analysis phase). The third dimension is proving to be difficult to capture at this stage, and so has been ignored in our model.