Guest Editors’ Introduction Software Metrics: Charting the Course

oftware has become critical to commercially vital technologies that account for 12 million jobs and one trillion dollars of sales in the US alone.’ And it continues to become central to more products. making many new ones possible and reducing cost or increasing functionality in existing ones. In addition. software products contribute indirectly to the delivery of many other important products and services such as banking, telecommunications, and transportation. For these reasons. software engineers face challenging times. As society becomes more dependent on software. engineers must increase customer satisfaction, boost software-development productivity rates, and reduce product-defect rates. Because software directlv affects product users. the responsibility for customer satisfaction is increasing. With so many tasks dependent upon software. small increases in software development productivity can yield large economic gains. while decreases in software-defect rates can prevent large economic losses. Most importantly. where software supports life-critical tasks or life-saving research. decreasing defect rates and increasing productivitv rates will save lives. International expansion is another factor. Nations now Cewed as potential software consumers will themselves become software producers once they comprehend the huge economic role of software production. These new sources of products will further broaden the choices for consumers and motivate the industry to stress customer satisfaction.