... enter its orbit around that planet. Software quality is real. The challenge lies in measuring this intangible feature, so that it can be controlled and improved. And the smart thing to do when measuring intangibles is to take more than one approach and see if they converge. One approach to measuring software quality is to count the number of defects at each stage of testing and divide by some measure of size, like thousand lines of code, to arrive at the defect density. This tells us how well the software is meeting the precise specifications against which it was designed. Several measures analogous to defect density can be conceived and used. Unfortunately this cannot be the only approach, as it depends a lot on the thoroughness of our testing and the completeness of the specifications themselves. A simpler approach is to poll customer satisfaction and find out whether the software ...

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