A measure for composite module cohesion

Abstract

An important software design activity is the decomposition of complex systems into conceptually independent modules that cooperate to achieve a desired result. This modularization represents a significant software engineering activity that continues to receive considerable research attention. This paper illustrates how software may be modularized by automatically determining the cohesiveness of modules in the system. Module cohesion is defined to be a quality attribute that seeks to measure the singleness of purpose of a module. We propose a metric that measures the cohesion of individual subprograms of a software system as related to each other. This metric is illustrated with detailed examples and is supported with empirical evidence supporting the viability of the measure.