What are Product Matrices?

Product metrics are software product measures at any stage of their development, from requirements to established systems. Product metrics are related to software features only. Product metrics fall into two classes: 

1. Dynamic metrics are collected by measurements made from a program in execution.
2. Static metrics are collected by measurements made from system representations such as design, programs, or documentation.

Dynamic metrics help assess a program’s efficiency and reliability while static metrics help understand, understand, and maintain the complexity of a software system. Dynamic metrics are usually quite closely related to software quality attributes. It is relatively easy to measure the execution time required for particular tasks and to estimate the time required to start the system. These are directly related to the efficiency of the system failures and the type of failure can be logged and directly related to the reliability of the software. On the other hand, static matrices have an indirect relationship with quality attributes. A large number of these matrices have been proposed to try to derive and validate the relationship between complexity, understandability, and maintainability—several static metrics that have been used for assessing quality attributes.

In software engineering, product metrics are quantitative measures used to assess the characteristics of software products. These metrics help in evaluating various aspects such as quality, performance, maintainability, and complexity of the software. By providing objective data, product metrics enable developers and managers to make informed decisions about the software development process. Common product metrics include lines of code (LOC), cyclomatic complexity, depth of conditional nesting, and readability measures like the Fog Index.