Measuring complexity of network and service management components

Software metrics are currently used in the industry mainly for cost and effort estimation, while some research suggested their use as fault indicators. There are very few empirical studies in software measurement, especially in the realm of object-oriented metrics. There is no record of management system assessment using software metrics. In this paper we discuss the use of the established object-oriented metrics as complexity/coupling and thus risk indicators early in the management system development lifecycle. Moreover, we subject a service management component designed in UML to the metric assessment, and present a detailed analysis of these measurements. The service management component was re-engineered in the context European Commission-sponsored ACTS research project (FlowThru). The measurement results indicate that the highest level of complexity, and thus also risk, is exhibited at the interconnection points between stand-alone components. Finally, the results imply a strong ordinal relationship between the metrics