Which of the following is NOT an example of metrics used to manage and control the products?

Metrics for managing and controlling products focus on their quality, reliability, and performance characteristics. Mean time to failure (MTTF), number of defects, and technical performance are all direct measures of a product's attributes and behavior in operation. They provide insight into the product's quality and fitness for use.

Lines of code (LOC), however, is a measure of the software's size. While it can be an input for other metrics (e.g., defect density = defects/LOC), LOC by itself is a process or size metric. It measures the volume of the codebase, not its quality, reliability, or performance. A high or low LOC count does not inherently indicate a good or bad product, making it unsuitable as a primary metric for product control.

A. Mean time to failure: This is a key reliability metric that directly measures the product's operational stability, making it essential for product control.

B. Number of defects found: This is a fundamental quality metric used to assess and control the product's correctness and readiness for release.

C. Technical performance: This measures how well the product meets its specified performance requirements (e.g., speed, throughput), a critical aspect of product management.

1. Kan, S. H. (2003). Metrics and Models in Software Quality Engineering (2nd ed.). Addison-Wesley Professional.

Page 89, Section 4.2.1, "Lines of Code (LOC)": This section describes LOC as a primary measure of software size. It notes, "From a quality perspective, LOC is used as a normalization factor for other metrics... By itself, it is not a quality metric." This supports that LOC is a size metric, not a direct control metric for product quality like the others.

Page 103, Section 4.3, "Customer Problems Metric": This section discusses defect metrics, including the "number of defects found," as a direct indicator of product quality from the customer's perspective.

Page 111, Section 4.5, "Reliability Metrics": This section explicitly lists Mean-Time-To-Failure (MTTF) as a key metric for software reliability, which is a crucial aspect of product control.

2. Fenton, N. E., & Bieman, J. M. (2014). Software Metrics: A Rigorous and Practical Approach (3rd ed.). CRC Press.

Chapter 8, "Measuring Internal Product Attributes: Size": This chapter categorizes Lines of Code (LOC) as a fundamental measure of product size. It distinguishes size from external quality attributes like reliability or performance.

Chapter 9, "Measuring External Product Attributes": This chapter details metrics for externally visible characteristics such as reliability (which includes MTTF) and performance. This categorization clearly separates size (LOC) from performance and reliability metrics used for product control.

3. Pressman, R. S., & Maxim, B. R. (2015). Software Engineering: A Practitioner's Approach (8th ed.). McGraw-Hill Education.

Chapter 25, "Process and Project Metrics": This chapter distinguishes between process, project, and product metrics. It classifies LOC as a "size-oriented metric" often used to normalize other quality metrics, rather than a direct measure of quality itself. In contrast, it presents defect counts and performance measures as direct indicators of product quality.