We have defined an XS metric that can be used to compare the excessive complexity of items at different levels of the code-base. However, we also want to be able to home in on projects or subsystems that contain a relatively high number of items with XS at one or many levels. That is, we want to measure the total amount of XS contained by a composite item, rather than just the XS of that item's design breakout.

We do this by simply summing the XS of the item with the XS of all the items recursively contained by the item. So as well as counting the LOC contained by a package, class, etc., we also count the nominal number of excessively complex lines. This allows Structure101 Studio to give a drill-down for size and XS at any level of composition.