The wait for a new edition of this book is over. Long considered the go-to text for its thorough coverage of software measurement and experimentation, the new edition succeeds splendidly in bringing the field up to date while including new and important topics.

The structure of the book is in two parts. Part 1 covers the fundamentals of software measurement and experimentation. Both researchers and practitioners alike will gain a valuable understanding of why measurement is critical for quality improvements in software development processes and software products. The goals of rigorous empirical software engineering are emphasized, with new sections on key topics such as data collection, data analyses, and Bayesian networks for risk assessment and prediction. The authors do an outstanding job of balancing formal analysis topics with examples that ground the reader in practical application.

Part 2 explores the practice of software measurement, with detailed information on metrics in the categories of software size, structure, and external qualities such as usability, maintainability, and security. A final chapter in this section focuses on the varied software reliability metrics. The clear value here is that these sections have been updated with the latest results from recent advances in software measurement research and practice.

With this updated edition, this book solidifies its standing as the most complete reference text for software measurement. I highly recommend its consideration to researchers, instructors, and practitioners in software engineering. However, as the field of software engineering faces new challenges in the areas of cloud computing, mobile applications, social networking, big data analytics, and the Internet of Things (to name just a few), I hope that we do not have to wait another 18 years for the software metrics surrounding these topics to be included in a new edition.

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