18 Software Quality Metrics You Should Track to Meet Your Goals

Every day, you face the challenge of delivering high-quality software that meets user expectations and business goals. However, poor-quality software can quickly derail even your best efforts, leading to setbacks, frustrated teams, and dissatisfied users.

You need insights to guide your software development process, find weak spots, and ensure each product release stands out for its reliability and performance.

That’s why we’ve compiled this list of 18 key metrics. These are the same metrics our team of seasoned software professionals uses to help teams like yours create better software products. Also, these metrics can give you valuable insights into all aspects of software quality that directly impact your success.

What Are Software Quality Metrics?

Software quality metrics are key performance indicators that quantify various facets of the software development process. By applying these metrics, you can assess how effectively your software performs, how closely it aligns with user expectations, and whether it adheres to established quality standards.

Tracking these metrics helps you gain data-driven insights into areas such as code quality, performance, user satisfaction, and the overall software development process.

These metrics can show you how your SDLC works, where it might fall short, and what you can do to improve. For example, you can track defect rates to understand quality issues or monitor code churn to identify areas of instability.

Whether it’s measuring the time between failures, analyzing unit tests, or reviewing code coverage, software quality metrics are your guide to building better products. They highlight potential issues and give you the data to decide where to focus your team’s efforts.

Categories of Software Quality Metrics

Understanding the categories of software quality metrics helps you focus on the specific areas that impact your software’s success. These metrics are grouped into four main categories, each addressing critical aspects of software quality.

Breaking them down helps you see what to measure and why it matters. Here are the four categories:

• Code quality: These metrics measure your codebase's readability, maintainability, and reliability. Metrics such as code complexity, code churn rate, and others help you assess how easy your code is to work with and improve. They’re important for keeping your code efficient and reducing repair time.
• Process metrics: These metrics help you focus on how smoothly your software development process runs. Cycle time, the average time spent on user stories, and production metrics highlight inefficiencies and help you streamline workflows. These insights allow you to make data-driven decisions and keep your projects on track.
• Product metrics: Using these metrics can help you evaluate the quality of your software product. They cover areas such as functionality, usability, and uptime. Tracking these ensures your product meets user expectations, delivers a smooth experience, and reduces failure rates.
• Agile metrics: These metrics support Agile principles and can help you monitor team performance and adapt quickly. Metrics such as throughput, velocity, and customer satisfaction give you actionable insights into how your team delivers value over time. They also ensure your development aligns with user feedback and evolving needs.
  
  

Key Software Quality Metrics to Track

Tracking the right software quality metrics helps you create better products and improve your development process. These key metrics provide insights into the health of your software and your team’s performance. Use them to identify issues, unblock your workflow, and focus on what matters most.

Code Quality Metrics

Code quality metrics help you understand how maintainable, readable, and reliable your code is. Focusing on these metrics enables you to improve the foundation of your software. Here are the code quality metrics:

2. Change failure rate: This shows how frequently code changes result in issues after deployment. A lower failure rate means your testing process and code reviews catch problems early.

3. Code churn: Frequent code changes might indicate instability or unclear requirements. Monitoring this metric helps you spot patterns that affect long-term quality and avoid unnecessary rework.

Process Metrics

Process metrics reveal how well your development workflows work. These metrics spotlight inefficiencies to help you make improvements that boost team productivity. Here are the process metrics:

7. Cycle time: This measures how long it takes to complete a feature from start to finish. A shorter cycle time means your team delivers updates more efficiently and improves your time-to-market.

8. Lead time for changes: This DORA metric measures the speed of implementing changes into production. A shorter lead time means a smooth, efficient workflow and better DevOps practices.

9. Flow efficiency: This metric evaluates the percentage of time spent on value-added work versus total flow time. Tracking flow efficiency helps you balance workloads and identify bottlenecks that slow progress.

10. Issue-type time investment: Axify makes it easy to see how much time your team spends on different task types. Analyzing this data lets you adjust priorities to focus on high-impact work and avoid unnecessary delays.

Product Metrics

Product metrics evaluate how well your software performs for end-users. They help you focus on creating reliable, high-performing software that meets user needs. Here are some of them:

11. Uptime and availability: This metric tracks how frequently your system is operational and accessible to users. High uptime means fewer disruptions and a more reliable experience. Downtime frustrates users and impacts trust, so you should aim for near-constant availability.

12. Performance metrics: These include response time, load time, and transaction speed. Users expect fast and efficient software, so keeping an eye on these metrics ensures your software meets performance standards. Slow or unresponsive systems can lead to lost users and a tarnished reputation.

13. Customer satisfaction metrics: Tools such as Net Promoter Score (NPS), Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT), and Customer Effort Score (CES) provide direct feedback on user experience. Tracking these helps you understand how well your software aligns with customer expectations and where to improve.

Agile Metrics

Agile metrics focus on tracking progress and improving the iterative development process. These metrics give you a clear view of team performance and software quality in an Agile environment. Here are some Agile metrics:

14. Throughput: This measures how many tasks or user stories your team completes in a set time period. Monitoring throughput lets you identify patterns, adjust workloads, and predict future delivery rates. A steady throughput signals a balanced and productive team.

15. Recidivism: This tracks tasks that require rework because they failed quality checks. High recidivism means deeper issues in your development process, such as unclear requirements or inadequate testing. Identifying and addressing these issues can reduce wasted effort and enhance team output.

Although Axify doesn't directly track recidivism metrics, it provides insights into pull request review times and merge delays so you can identify patterns of repeated rework. Addressing these bottlenecks and improving code review processes reduces the need for rework and streamlines workflows.

In Value Stream Mapping in Axify, you can see the Issue Cycle Time metric. Here, we mark items that have been sent backward in the stream, like in the image below: 

Additional Quality Metrics to Consider

Beyond the core metrics, additional measurements help you focus on long-term improvements and overall software health. These metrics provide deeper insights into critical areas of your software development project. Here are some of them:

16. Test coverage: This metric shows the percentage of code covered by automated or manual tests. High test coverage ensures your testing process identifies issues early and reduces risks during product releases. It highlights how thoroughly you’re testing and helps prioritize areas that need attention.

17. Security metrics: Tracking vulnerabilities and the time it takes to resolve them is crucial for software security. These metrics help you identify weak points and take immediate action to protect sensitive data and user trust.

18. Technical debt: This metric measures the effort needed to refactor or improve existing code. It’s a clear indicator of how sustainable your codebase is over time, which allows you to plan maintenance while keeping technical debt manageable.

As Pierre Gilbert, Software Delivery Expert at Axify, points out:

Benefits of Tracking Software Quality Metrics

Tracking software quality metrics is important for improving the quality of your software solutions and streamlining your development efforts. It helps you identify and address critical issues before they escalate.

Monitoring key metrics allows you to enhance code maintainability and tackle technical debt proactively. It makes your codebase easier to update, reduces long-term costs, and improves efficiency for you and your team. 

Tracking software quality metrics also helps you improve customer satisfaction by first identifying gaps in user experience. With these insights, your software can meet expectations and keep your users engaged.

Besides, metrics empower you to make data-driven decisions. Instead of guessing, you gain insights to guide your improvements and make every decision more impactful. They can also help you identify bottlenecks in your development process while streamlining workflows and boosting overall efficiency.

Challenges in Implementing Software Quality Metrics

Implementing software quality metrics comes with its own set of challenges. One common issue is tracking too many metrics at once. It’s tempting to measure everything, but too much data can overwhelm you and obscure what truly matters. Starting with one meaningful metric allows you to focus and make incremental progress.

Another challenge is failing to address the right problems. You might spend time on issues that don’t significantly impact your software or user experience. To avoid this, you should quantify how frequently a problem occurs and who it affects. By tying metrics to real impact, you ensure that your efforts deliver a solid ROI.

The lack of a unified platform can also complicate things. Managing fragmented data across different tools makes it harder to see the big picture. A centralized solution like Axify gives you clarity and helps you act faster.

Lastly, the sheer size of your vision might paralyze you.

Tackling smaller problems keeps you focused and helps you drive meaningful progress, but we’ll discuss that and other tactics in the section below.

How to Improve Software Quality Using Metrics

Improving the quality of software products is about making smart, actionable changes. Using metrics effectively allows you to pinpoint weak spots and drive continuous improvement. 

Here are some practical steps you can take to enhance your software quality:

• Break down tasks: You should divide user stories into smaller ones and split pull requests into manageable pieces. This makes reviews and testing more effective, which can help you catch issues early. You can use the S.P.I.D.R technique here.
• Leverage continuous integration (CI) and automated testing: Increase test coverage to catch bugs sooner in the software testing process. Automated testing ensures your team can focus on critical areas without wasting time on repetitive tasks.
• Encourage collaborative development: We believe that pair and mob programming can help you foster better problem-solving and knowledge sharing. These social development practices can strengthen developer experience and improve code.

• Monitor and alert in real-time: You should also use monitoring tools to track uptime, performance, and security continuously. Immediate alerts let your product teams respond to issues before they escalate.
• Perform root cause analysis for recurring issues: Instead of fixing symptoms, you can identify the root causes of problems. This approach minimizes recurring defects and improves long-term quality.

Track Software Quality Metrics with Axify

Tracking software quality metrics doesn’t have to be overwhelming. With Axify, you can gain clear insights that align your entire team. By integrating development activities with project management tools, Axify simplifies the way you measure performance, quality, and efficiency.

Here's what Axify offers:

• Value stream mapping (VSM): Identify bottlenecks and inefficiencies in your workflows to ensure smooth delivery.
• Software delivery forecast: Estimate delivery dates with confidence and improve your timelines with precise task organization.
• DORA and flow metrics: Monitor critical metrics, such as deployment frequency and Failed deployment recovery time, alongside flow metrics, like throughput. These metrics help you evaluate and improve development efficiency.
• Daily Digest: Stay aligned with your team by organizing daily rituals and ensuring everyone is on the same page.
• Three dashboard views: Get a tailored view of your software quality metrics. Whether you manage one team, a group of teams, or an entire organization, Axify’s dashboards deliver insights for every level.
• Automated reporting: You can now eliminate manual reporting tasks. Axify generates detailed reports, which gives you more time to focus on continuous improvement.

Using Axify allows you to equip your team with tools to improve quality, collaboration, and decision-making. Here’s what you gain:

• Increased visibility: Understand your software quality and processes holistically to make smarter, data-driven decisions.
• Enhanced collaboration: Align cross-functional teams with shared quality objectives and real-time insights.
• Continuous improvement: Track progress over time and use Axify’s data to implement iterative changes that build lasting improvements.

Adding Axify to your workflow is effortless. You don’t need any coding skills to integrate it with your tools. You can choose the metrics you want to monitor, and Axify handles the rest. This gives you a hassle-free setup and immediate insights.

Take the first step toward better software quality today. Book a demo with us to see how Axify can transform your development process. Let us help you achieve smarter, faster, and more collaborative workflows.