Measuring Design-Level Cohesion

—Cohesion was first introduced as a software attribute that, when measured, could be used to predict properties of implementations that would be created from a given design. Unfortunately, cohesion, as originally defined, could not be objectively assessed, while more recently developed objective cohesion measures depend on code-level information. We show that association-based and slice-based approaches can be used to measure cohesion using only design-level information. An analytical and empirical analysis shows that the design-level measures correspond closely with code-level cohesion measures. They can be used as predictors of or surrogates for the code-level measures. The design-level cohesion measures are formally defined, have been implemented, and can support software design, maintenance, and restructuring.

• Type: Journal
• Year: 1998
• Where: TSE
• Authors: James M. Bieman, Byung-Kyoo Kang
• Keywords: Code-level Cohesion Measures, Cohesion Measures, Objective Cohesion, TSE 1998