Tracking metrics for software quality accurately is critical yet challenging. Decision-makers often face a lack of real-time data, inconsistent reporting, and difficulty interpreting metrics. These gaps can lead to inefficiencies, increased costs, and delayed product launches.
Our proven process with IdeaSoft success stories ensures reliable data collection and actionable insights. In this article, we want to discuss how to measure software quality.
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Table of contents:
- What are software quality metrics?
- Top Software Quality Metrics to Track
- How to Ensure You or Your Developers Track Metrics Correctly
- Tracking Quality Metrics in IdeaSoft’s Cases
- Summary
What are software quality metrics?
Software quality metrics are the measures that gauge effectiveness, reliability, and efficiency in any software product produced. All these indicators provide a regular framework to detect possible problems, optimize the process, and make the end product meet user expectations.
To businesses, quality metrics serve as recommendations on how consistency in development should be preserved, improvements prioritized, and customer satisfaction enhanced.
We have created a gable for you with categories of quality metrics and their benefits for businesses.
| Category | Description | Business Benefits |
| Performance | Measures how well the software operates under specific conditions (e.g., load times, response rates). | Ensures smooth operation during peak usage, improving user experience and retention. |
| Reliability | Tracks system uptime, failure rates, and the ability to recover from crashes. | Reduces downtime, enhances trust, and minimizes financial loss due to system failures. |
| Usability | Evaluates the software’s ease of use and user satisfaction through surveys or task success rates. | Improves adoption rates and customer loyalty by delivering an intuitive interface. |
| Maintainability | Assesses how easily the code can be updated, debugged, or extended. | Speeds up future development and reduces costs of fixing or enhancing features. |
| Security | Monitors vulnerabilities and adherence to security protocols. | Protects sensitive data, ensures compliance, and mitigates risks of cyberattacks. |
| Scalability | Examines how well the software adapts to increased user demand or data volume. | Prepares the system for growth, avoiding performance bottlenecks and user frustration. |
If you are interested in how to assemble a team, we have described this in our startup development guide.
Top Software Quality Metrics to Track
Software quality is much more than bug fixing. It’s about delivering a product that caters to the expectations of its users, is reliable, and scales well. Software quality metrics give tangible ways of monitoring these aspects, helping teams highlight weaknesses and maintain high standards with minimal costly errors.
In this section, we’ll discuss key metrics for software development that help decision-makers track and improve the quality of their software products.
Defect Density
Defect density is the first on our list of software metrics. It measures the number of identified defects in relation to the size of the software, usually expressed in KLOC. This metric indicates problem points in the codebase, which assists the team in focusing on debugging efforts to improve the overall quality of the product.
Code Coverage
Code coverage measures the percentage of code exercised as a result of automated testing. High code coverage ensures that the critical paths and edge cases have been tested, which reduces the likelihood of untested bugs making their way into production.
Customer Found Defects
This is the count of defects found by the customers post-release. High counts mean better testing needs to be done before the release, but monitoring them continuously helps to refine the quality assurance processes and increase customer’s trust.
Mean Time to Failure (MTTF)
MTTF gives the average time before the failure of any system occurs. MTTF is a critical indication of reliability, mainly in systems that need high availability. A longer MTTF means that the software product is robust and stable.
Test Execution
It reviews the number of test plans versus tests executed in a development cycle. Tracking provides real-time insight into testing progress, catching bottlenecks, and keeping it on schedule.
User Satisfaction Score (USS)
It also collects feedback related to the performance, usability, and feature set of the software from the end-users. High values of USS denote that the product meets customer expectations well, while lower values indicate areas for improvement.
How to Ensure You or Your Developers Track Metrics Correctly
Accomplishing effective tracking of software quality metrics requires continuous betterment. To business owners, this means ensuring that development partners are both actually measuring the right metrics and communicating meaningful insight. Misaligned goals or poor communication leads to a missed opportunity to get issues early.
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Here are tracking strategies for performance metrics for software developers:
- Promote transparency in communication. Encourage frequent metric results reporting through comprehensive reports and meetings. This transparency encourages early threat identification and builds trust among stakeholders.
- Establish clear expectations via SLAs and KPIs. Estimate SLAs and KPIs to define achievable objectives. These agreements help both parties know what they are working towards, thus limiting assumptions and increasing accountability.
- Invest in tools and training. Ensure developers have access to sophisticated tools to track and analyze metrics. Similarly, training on how to understand data and bring changes effectively should be provided.
- Review periodically. Schedule periodic reviews against defined KPIs and SLAs. These will align everything and make room for course correction if something goes off track.
Here are examples of SLAs and KPIs for metrics for software development.
| Metric | Example KPI | Example SLA |
| Defect Density | Fewer than 5 defects per 1,000 lines of code. | Fix critical defects within 24 hours of detection. |
| Code Coverage | Maintain at least 85% test coverage. | Run automated tests daily and report coverage rates weekly. |
| Mean Time to Failure | MTTF exceeds 30 days under normal conditions. | Ensure system uptime of 99.9% per month. |
| Customer Found Defects | Fewer than 10% of defects reported by users. | Deliver software with fewer than 5 critical issues per release. |
| User Satisfaction Score | Achieve a USS of 90% or higher post-release. | Conduct surveys within 30 days of deployment and address feedback. |
Tracking Quality Metrics in IdeaSoft’s Cases
IdeaSoft is committed to projects with continuous attention to technical excellence. We welcome you to meet our team.
Here is the set of practices that comprise the concept of technical excellence at IdeaSoft Solutions. It outlines the process of tracking the status of technical excellence in measuring software quality.
Technical Design Reviews
The team verifies technical design decisions with the project architect (and, if necessary (if no project architect is allocated), with the competent lead) to prevent possible architectural problems down the road. Technical design decisions that do not considerably impact the software architecture can also be reviewed by senior developers on the team.
Code Reviews (MUST HAVE)
Usually, to ensure the code is written in the best possible way and to improve developers’ skills, a peer code review by anyone from the development team is necessary. As a result, we have better code quality and continuous improvement of the team’s development skills.
Testing By Developer (MUST HAVE)
The first thing to do before declaring the developed functionality as “ready for testing” is to test it with the developer. Usually, such a disciplined approach
prevents the project from frequent rework and unnecessary back-and-forth loops between developers and test engineers.
Tech versioning (MUST HAVE)
We maintain version control for each tech update. We ensure that any changes or updates to the codebase are properly documented and traceable. This practice helps us track changes effectively and manage potential risks.
Coding Standards (NICE TO HAVE)
Verifying code quality by automatic tools and AI tools is another way to improve code quality and eliminate trivial mistakes and non-conformance to the applicable coding standards. In addition, this practice doesn’t require much effort, and hence, the impact on the cost of quality is low.
Gated Check-ins (NICE TO HAVE)
Reduce the chances of breaking a build (and often the associated tests) by preventing changes that have not passed the necessary quality bar from entering into the mainline branch of the version control system.
This approach prevents the changed code from becoming a part of the shared mainline unless peers review it and pass the static code analysis checks. As a result, it is unlikely that the product will be affected by poor code quality.
Continuous Integration (NICE TO HAVE)
Among software development quality metrics, it is one of the best ways to ensure the build’s quality. It is awesome to identify and eliminate integration issues that could otherwise accumulate and result in a so-called “integration hell”.
Unit Testing (MATURE)
Automated unit tests are extremely helpful for ensuring the functional correctness of standalone modules (units). Unit testing mainly aims to isolate each system unit to identify, analyze, and fix defects.
A secondary benefit of well-maintained unit tests is that they become an “executable specification”. Provided that the tests pass, it is guaranteed to be up-to-date, contrary to traditional functional specifications that tend to become outdated quickly.
Product versioning
We implement product versioning to track different versions of the software and ensure that updates and changes are systematically applied. This helps us manage features and fixes effectively while maintaining a clear overview of the product’s evolution.
Summary
Tracking software quality metrics is more than a technical necessity. It’s a strategic means to create reliable, efficient, user-friendly products. If one pays due attention to the right metrics, such as defect density, code coverage, and user satisfaction, a business can spot challenges in advance, minimize costs, and deliver functionally.
In that regard, the secret for decision-makers rests in collaboration. Find the development partners that offer high-level transparency, align your objectives through measurable KPIs, and keep you abreast of project developments. Metrics at heart ensure your software does more than “work”.
Ready to optimize your software? Let’s collaborate on tracking the metrics that matter most. Leave your contact below and we will get back to you within a day.
