exhaustive and non-overlapping

1.  Define a set of characteristics which are important for software, and reasonably
exhaustive and non-overlapping.
2.  Develop candidate metrics for assessing the degree to which the software has the defined
characteristic.
3.  Investigate the characteristics and associated metrics to determine their correlation with
software quality, magnitude of potential benefits of using, quantifiability, and ease of
automation.
4.  Evaluate each candidate metric with respect to the above criteria, and with respect to its interactions with other metrics: overlaps, dependencies, shortcomings,

etc. 5.  Based on these evaluations, refine the set of
software characteristics into a set which is more mutually exclusive and exhaustive and sup-
portive of software quality evaluation.
6.  Refine the candidate metrics and realign them in the context of the revised set of characteristics.