Cyclomatic complexity density and software maintenance productivity

A study of the relationship between the cyclomatic complexity metric (T. McCabe, 1976) and software maintenance productivity, given that a metric that measures complexity should prove to be a useful predictor of maintenance costs, is reported. The cyclomatic complexity metric is a measure of the maximum number of linearly independent circuits in a program control graph. The current research validates previously raised concerns about the metric on a new data set. However, a simple transformation of the metric is investigated whereby the cyclomatic complexity is divided by the size of the system in source statements. thereby determining a complexity density ratio. This complexity density ratio is demonstrated to be a useful predictor of software maintenance productivity on a small pilot sample of maintenance projects