A Systematic Review on the Impact of CK Metrics on the Functional Correctness of Object-Oriented Classes

The Chidamber and Kemerer (CK) metrics suite is one of the most popular and highly cited suites for measuring Object-Oriented (OO) designs. A great amount of empirical studies have been conducted to evaluate these metrics as indicators of the functional correctness of classes in OO systems. However, there has been no attempt to systematically review and report these empirical evidences. To identify the relation of CK metrics with functional correctness, we have performed a systematic review of empirical evidences published in the literature that support or reject CK metrics as indicators of functional correctness. Our search strategy identified 20 papers that contain relevant empirical evidences. Our results conclude that WMC, CBO, RFC and LCOM metrics are good indicators of functional correctness of OO classes. Inheritance metrics, DIT and NOC, are however not useful indicators of functional correctness.