How to Measure Code Quality: 8 Metrics Every Organization Should Track

Every company is in some way a software company, whether your business relies on a website, mobile app or customer portal virtually every aspect of business interacts with code at some point. Therefore understanding the quality of your codebase is no longer just a technical exercise, it’s strategically essential as a healthy, well-maintained codebase supports faster innovation, greater security, lower operating costs, and a competitive edge in the market. By contrast, a neglected or poorly managed codebase can lead to security breaches, product downtime, and wasted development hours fixing technical debt.

But as business leaders and boards how can you gauge whether your software is in good shape, especially if you’re not yourself in the day-to-day trenches of coding? This article explores eight key metrics and areas to examine, ranging from automated code scans to developer activity, to help senior leaders get a clear picture of their software’s health. Though each of these factors has deep technical considerations, they’re all tied to strategic outcomes that can significantly impact your organization’s success.

Measuring Code Quality

1. Independent Full Code Scans on a Regular Schedule

What does it mean?
An independent code scan is a thorough review of your code by an external or automated tool that checks for quality, security, and compliance issues. Performing these scans on a regular, automated schedule ensures you have consistent oversight of your code no matter how often it changes. The aim is to ensure all key stakeholders have access to sufficient information to be informed and empowered to make decisions that impact your overall development resources. 

Why It Matters

  • Objective Insight: An independent scan provides an unbiased view of your code’s strengths and weaknesses, allowing you to address problems before they become critical.
  • Regular Updates: Scheduling these scans regularly keeps your team in the loop about newly introduced bugs, vulnerabilities, or inefficiencies.

How to Implement

  • Set a Cadence: Decide on a frequency that aligns with your release cycles (weekly, monthly, or quarterly).
  • Review Reports: Ensure the reports are shared with both technical and executive stakeholders in an understandable format, so decisions can be made quickly if issues arise.

2. Code Smells: Identifying and Understanding Coding Issues

What are they?
“Code smell” is a term used by developers to describe hints that something in the code is ‘off’, potentially indicating deeper problems like poor design, flawed logic, or maintainability issues. While a single code smell isn’t always catastrophic, it can compound over time, leading to a fragile codebase. What’s important with coding issues is that you are identifying fundamental, non-negotiables – you don’t want to be getting into coding styles or how certain code is being written as that is hugely vague and open to dispute. Focussing on coding bad practices and areas which all developers would agree need to be resolved means you can improve your codebase quickly.

Why It Matters

  • Maintainability: Code smells often signal areas that are harder to maintain or debug.
  • Technical Debt: Ignoring code smells can accumulate technical debt that eventually needs to be paid down—at a higher cost.

How to resolve

  • Clear Documentation: Keep track of common code smells and how to address them in your organization’s coding guidelines. Use benchmarks or monthly tracking to see resolutions or newly identified issues.
  • Automated Detection: Modern code analysis tools can spot potential problem areas so your team can act quickly.

3. Security Issues or Vulnerabilities Within the Code

What are they?
Security vulnerabilities are flaws or oversights in your software that attackers can exploit to gain unauthorized access, steal data, or disrupt services. These could be anything from poorly configured APIs to missing encryption or unpatched libraries.

Why It Matters

  • Reputational Risk: A major breach can cause long-term harm to brand reputation and customer trust.
  • Compliance: Depending on the industry, regulatory requirements (like GDPR, HIPAA, or PCI-DSS) may enforce strict penalties if security is compromised.

How to mitigate

  • Regular Security Audits: Incorporate automated security scanning as a standard part of the development and deployment process. It is important to not only focus on newly written code, sometimes older legacy code is where you may find more issues or risk – so it’s important that you have a solution in-place across your entire codebase.
  • Immediate Action: Ensure you have a method to prioritize and fix vulnerabilities quickly to minimize the window of exposure. Unfortunately a common problem with many security scanning tools is the volume of ‘potential’ vulnerabilities you may be presented with. However with new technologies like AI, you can identify and prioritize your most urgent issues first.

4. Outdated Dependencies and Why They’re There

What does it mean?
Dependencies are external libraries, frameworks, or modules your code relies on to function. Over time, these dependencies can become outdated as newer versions are released, often fixing bugs or patching security flaws.

Why It Matters

  • Stability: Old versions may have unresolved bugs that could impact the reliability of your product.
  • Security: Outdated dependencies often contain known vulnerabilities, making them easy targets for hackers.

How to find them

  • Dependency Tracking: Keep a documented inventory of all dependencies, noting their versions and update timelines.
  • Automated Alerts: Use tools that automatically alert you when a new version is released or a security advisory is published.

5. Outdated Open Source Components and Their Impact

What are they?
Most modern software integrates open-source components. While these are often well-maintained and community-driven, they can also become outdated or be replaced by more secure versions over time. It is also common for developers to use snippets of code, not necessarily using an entire component or package, however even by only using a small amount of code from an open source package this still means you are liable to adhere to that codes licence.

Why It Matters

  • License Compliance: Some open-source components come with licensing conditions. Using outdated or incompatible licenses can lead to legal issues. Businesses are often required to be able to produce a full Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) which would include documentation of any open source components being used across their software (be it free or commercial use).
  • Security & Support: If an open-source project isn’t maintained, it may no longer receive critical security patches, meaning it becomes a security risk or at risk of failing. 

How to mitigate

  • Regular Reviews: Ensure someone on the team is responsible for monitoring the status of open-source libraries and where appropriate update and review.
  • Community Engagement: Encourage your developers to stay active in open-source communities; they’ll learn about important patches or version changes faster.

6. Understanding what Percentage of Code Being Deployed is Bug Fixing or Security Related

What does this mean?
If the bulk of your new code deployments focuses on bug fixes or patching security holes rather than new features or improvements, it can indicate underlying code quality or security oversight issues. Organizations where this is the case will often find that they are unable to launch new products, features or enhancements without experiencing delays and huge expense. 

Why It Matters

  • Slowed Innovation: Constantly fixing problems leaves less room for new, value-adding features.
  • Early Warning Signal: A spike in bug-fix deployments may signal deeper architectural issues or a breakdown in development processes.

How to resolve

  • Set Benchmarks: Track the ratio of “maintenance” vs. “innovation” changes in your code. If the problem persist then it probably means a more formal discussion around implementing a technical debt project to bring the entire codebase up to scratch.
  • Root Cause Analysis: Investigate why so many fixes are required. Is it due to inadequate testing, lack of a secure coding culture, or reliance on obsolete frameworks?

7. Increasing Code Complexity Score

What It Is
Code complexity metrics measure how complicated your code has become, often factoring in the number of conditional branches, dependencies, and interwoven modules. A rising complexity score means your software might be harder to maintain and more prone to bugs.

Why It Matters

  • Maintainability: Highly complex code is more error-prone and requires specialized knowledge.
  • Scalability: Adding new features or handling additional load becomes more challenging if the existing code is already tangled and complex.

How to mitigate

  • Metric Tracking: Use automated code review tools to measure complexity over time, if you notice your code complexity increasing outside of proactive development releases then this should trigger a more detailed review.
  • Refactoring: Encourage developers to periodically refactor code to simplify structures and reduce interdependencies, while this may be time consuming it will benefit your codebase in the long run.

8. Lack of Developer Activity or Reliance on a Single Developer

What does this mean?
A healthy codebase usually has multiple contributors actively updating and refining the software. If only one person understands or commits to key parts of the code, or if development has slowed to a trickle, it can pose significant risks. The last thing any organization wants is to find out a problem can’t be fixed because the person who has access is off sick, or even worse, has resigned. By having visibility of who is working on what you can create a map of knowledge and be proactive in ensuring there are no single points of failure in your team.

Why It Matters

  • Single Point of Failure: Relying too heavily on one developer means institutional knowledge isn’t widely shared. If that person leaves, the team may struggle to maintain or scale the software.
  • Stalled Development: If activity is too low, it could indicate issues like inadequate resources, poor morale, or a shift in priorities that leaves your codebase at risk of stagnation.

How to mitigate

  • Commit Analytics: Track commit frequency and pull request activity to gauge how actively your codebase is maintained. Have some form of benchmarking across your team to identify top performers vs team members who may be stuck or struggling.
  • Knowledge Transfer: Implement regular code reviews and documentation practices to spread knowledge throughout the team.

Putting It All Together

Measuring code quality involves more than just reacting to problems as they arise; it requires a proactive and holistic approach. By keeping an eye on these eight key metrics and areas—regular independent scans, code smells, security vulnerabilities, outdated dependencies, open-source components, the ratio of bug-fix deployments, code complexity, and developer activity—you create a solid foundation for understanding the health and trajectory of your software.

For any C-Suite or Board, the main objective is to turn data into actionable insights. You don’t have to micromanage developers or sift through complex technical reports to do this. Instead, ensure your organization has the right systems in place to gather, interpret, and present these metrics in a way that helps you make informed decisions—whether you’re considering new product development, budgeting for technical debt reduction, or planning a security overhaul.

Where Independent Solutions Come In

An independent, objective solution can tie all these metrics together, however often it can be challenging to achieve this all under one interface – until now.

With The Code Registry you can reduce the need for multiple point solutions and enable real-time visibility into your code health. For instance, our platform automatically scans your code for vulnerabilities, checks for outdated libraries, evaluates code smells, and tracks commit history to give senior leaders a comprehensive overview without requiring an army of specialists.

Our platform can also provide executive-level summaries, non-technical dashboards, and alerts that help you monitor changes in the codebase over time. Instead of guessing whether your code is good, you’ll have concrete data, automated reports, and expert guidance to back up your strategic decisions.

Conclusion

Determining whether your organization’s code is “good” goes far beyond a single metric or a one-time audit. It’s about continuously monitoring a set of meaningful indicators—like security vulnerabilities, dependency health, and developer activity—and then using that information to drive improvement. By focusing on these eight key metrics and leveraging a centralized, independent solution like The Code Registry to surface insights, CTOs, CIOs, and CEOs can better ensure that their software not only meets current needs but remains robust and scalable for the future.

With the right tools and processes, you can transform your approach to software oversight from reactive to proactive, mitigating risks before they turn into critical issues. In doing so, you empower your organization to innovate more quickly, reduce costs, and maintain a competitive edge in an ever-evolving digital landscape.

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