OOA metrics for the Unified Modeling Language

UML is the emerging standard for expressing OOA/OOD models. New metrics for object oriented analysis models are introduced, and existing ones are adapted to the entities and concepts of UML. In particular, these metrics concern UML use case diagrams and class diagrams used during the OOA phase. The proposed metrics are intended to allow an early estimate of development efforts, implementation time and cost of the system under development, and to measure its object orientedness and quality since the beginning of the analysis phase. The proposed metric suite is described in detail, and its relations with proposed metrics found in the literature are highlighted. Some measurements on three software projects are given