What Do Coupling Modularity Metrics Measure?

Proceedings of International Conference on Advanced Design Research and Education (ICADRE14)

Year: 2014
Editor: Edwin Koh, Victor Shim, Tan Woei Wan, Ian Gibson, Andi S. Putra
Author: H, Katja
Institution: Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD), Singapore
Section: Designing Complex Systems
Page(s): 010-014
DOI number: 10.3850/978-981-09-1348-9_025
ISBN: 978-981-09-1348-9

Abstract

The multiple potential benefits of modular design have led to many efforts to help increase the level of modularity as part of system development. In order to measure the desired change in the level of modularity, several metrics have been developed over the last several years. In this paper we review multiple past coupling modularity metrics to analyse what properties of the system they measure and thus how they implicitly define modularity. We conclude that the metrics capture modularity very differently from one the other and further work is needed to better understand what metric to use when.

Keywords: Designing Complex Systems