ABSTRACT
This introductory chapter discusses key metric and measurement topics, in summary form, in order to illustrate the major measurements and metrics needed to evaluate software economic productivity and software quality with high precision. It illustrates 50 factors that influence software productivity and quality. The chapter explores the software measurement and metric practices that comply with standard manufacturing economic practices. It focuses on the ranges of productivity and quality from various industries and countries. The cumulative information on original development, maintenance, and enhancement is called "total cost of ownership" or TCO. The chapter illustrates cyber-attack costs as predicted by the author's SRM estimation tool. Cyber-attacks are expensive and are also becoming increasingly common for the software industry. It also illustrates a common failing of software documentation. Software staffing is a complex situation due to the fact that over half of the occupation groups are part-time specialists that only work for short periods.
