NORIH-HOLUND

Guest Editor’s Corner

Warren Harrison PSU Center for Software Quaky Research, Portland State University, Portland, Oregon

Software measurement is by now an accepted sub- discipline within software engineering. Its roots can be traced at least as far back as 1972, when M. H. Halstead published his now-famous “Natural Laws Controlling Algorithm Structure?” in the February 1972 issue of ACM SIGPLAN Notices. We have, of course, become much more sophisticated (and in some cases skeptical) over the intervening 22 years.

As the study of software measurement passes into its third decade, I am grateful for this opportunity to note the change in direction that has taken place. Originally engaged in an isolated academic pursuit, we find today that software metricians are equally likely to come from academia, industrial research labs, or actual software product development teams. This is borne out by the collection of articles appear- ing in this special issue. Each article is an adaptation of a selected presentation at the Sixth Annual Ore- gon Workshop on Software Metrics, held at Silver Falls, Oregon, on April 10-12, 1994.

What I find particularly significant about this col- lection of articles is the collaborations between in- dustry and academia some of them represent. This is encouraging because it is proof that the interests of academic researchers and the concerns of industrial practitioners are beginning of intersect. I am con- vinced that we in the academic research community

Figure 1.

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need an appreciation and understanding of the con- cerns and issues arising from the measurement of industrial software systems just as much as our counterparts in the world of industrial software de- velopment need the insights our interests in formal- ity and generality provide.

This interaction between academic researchers and industrial practitioners is manifested in many ways. In some cases, academic research groups are now using industrial data. In other situations, we find industrial practitioners using neural network technology. Of course, from the very beginning in 1989, our focus with the Annual Oregon Workshop was to foster interaction among academic research- ers and industrial practitioners.

At the 1989 Annual Oregon Workshop on Soft- ware Metrics, no academic/industrial collaborations were in evidence. In 1994, 35% of the papers repre- sented such a collaboration, as can be seen in Fig- ure 1.

Perhaps by the 1999 Workshop we can achieve 100% academic/industrial collaboration.

REFERENCE

Halstead, M. H., Natural Laws Controlling Structure? ACM SIGPLAN Not. (1972).

Percent of Industrial Collaborations At AOWSM

Algorithm

J. SYSTEMS SOFTWARE 1995; 29:l 0 1995 by Elsevier Science Inc. 655 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10010

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