Regardless the importance of counting on software requirements metrics, few
indicators are used in practice to support the requirements management during
software projects. The main reason seems to be the effort required to obtain
these metrics, which usually involve manual calculations. Based on a literature
review, this paper identifies twenty-two metrics that were reported as useful
for requirements management, and establishes the level of automation that can
be reached to calculate each metric. Based on it, the paper presents a
classifi-cation that helps project leaders identify particular indicators to
deal with the typical problem sources affecting the requirements engineering
processes. Adopting appropriate metrics allows software teams and project
leaders to im-prove the success rate of software developments.