Design Metrics as an Aid to Software Maintenance: An Empirical Study

✍ Scribed by Ferneley, Elaine H.

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1999
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 173 KB
• Volume: 11
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1040-550X
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1096-908x(199901/02)11:1<55::aid-smr184>3.0.co;2-o

✦ Synopsis

This paper proposes a technique for identifying areas within system designs that may be prone to future corrective or preventative maintenance activity. From that, this paper presents a set of measures that can be applied at the design stage of software development to support the production of more maintainable software. The measures are founded on the theories of coupling and control flow and have been empirically validated on a medium-sized industrial project. The results have shown that the control flow and export coupling measures are significantly good predictors of the future error rate.