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Reviewer: Murat M. Tanik

Two categories of object-oriented software metrics are covered in this handy guide: project metrics and design metrics. A unique and interesting feature of the book is that the metrics are based on measurement and advice obtained from real-life projects. Five of these projects are listed in the appendix. The authors state in the preface that “a set of C++ and Smalltalk projects containing from 60 to 700+ project specific classes” have been examined. Most of these projects were Smalltalk implementations, and most are now commercial products. The team sizes ranged from 2 to 25 developers, and project duration was from 6 to 30 months. According to the authors, the audience for this book includes object-oriented developers and managers. They state in the preface that “this is a practitioner's book.” The book is organized into four sections. The first section is a brief introduction covering the basic concepts, motivation, and organization of the book. The second section introduces project metrics. This section covers metrics related to application size, staffing size, and scheduling. The third section constitutes the main body of the book. It consists of detailed descriptions of metrics dealing with static characteristics of design. The metrics covered relate to method size, method internals, class size, class inheritance, method inheritance, class internals, and class externals. The fourth section is composed of recommendations. The rest of the book includes appendices, references, a glossary, and an index. The authors have managed to neatly package an extensive amount of experience in object-oriented metrics into a small book. I recommend this book to object-oriented project developers. In fact, I am planning to use it as a supplement in my object-oriented design and programming class for graduate engineering students .