Amber metrics for the testing and maintenance of object-oriented designs

For testing to be focused and efficient during object oriented design and development, it is necessary to detect and analyse problematic constructs. Measures of detection must be simplistic but meaningful. Due to the iterative nature of system development, measurement effort must be automatic or negligible. It is argued that currently available measures are used, but effort is put into understanding what the results mean for maintenance and testing. Design based metrics can be used to outline the maintenance cost. Reducing the effort in performing and checking system alterations radically affects the overall cost of system development