Measuring software quality: a case study

The National Security Agency´s (NSA) mission is to provide support for the security of the United States. Over the years, the Agency has become extremely dependent on the software that makes up its information technology infrastructure. NSA has come to view software as a critical resource upon which much of the world´s security, prosperity, and economic competitiveness increasingly rests. To ensure cost effective delivery of high quality software, NSA has analyzed effective quality measures applied to a sample code base of 25 million lines. This case study dramatically illustrates the benefits of code level measurement activities