Making software visible, operational, and maintainable in a small project environment
IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering
Impact of the technological environment on programmer/analyst job outcomes
Communications of the ACM
Experimentation in software engineering
IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering
A study of complexity metrics as surrogate measures of software maintainability
A study of complexity metrics as surrogate measures of software maintainability
Assessing software maintainability
Communications of the ACM
Some factors affecting program repair maintenance: an empirical study
Communications of the ACM
Determinants of program repair maintenance requirements
Communications of the ACM
ACM president's letter: throwaway programs
Communications of the ACM
Programmers use slices when debugging
Communications of the ACM
Improving computer program readability to aid modification
Communications of the ACM
Software engineering for the Cobol environment
Communications of the ACM
Problems in application software maintenance
Communications of the ACM
Structured programming in Cobol: an approach for application programmers
Communications of the ACM
Managing Software Development and Maintenance
Managing Software Development and Maintenance
Elements of Software Science (Operating and programming systems series)
Elements of Software Science (Operating and programming systems series)
Software Maintenance Management
Software Maintenance Management
Third time charm: Stronger prediction of programmer performance by software complexity metrics
ICSE '79 Proceedings of the 4th international conference on Software engineering
How do we tell truths that might hurt?
ACM SIGPLAN Notices
Comparing the cost of software conversion to the cost of reprogramming
ACM SIGPLAN Notices
Evaluating structured COBOL as a software engineering discipline
ACM SIGMIS Database
SCM '89 Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Software configuration management
An annotated bibliography on software maintenance
ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes
Software complexity and maintenance costs
Communications of the ACM
Science and Substance: A Challenge to Software Engineers
IEEE Software
An Economic Model to Estimate Software Rewriting and Replacement Times
IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering
IS maintainability: should it reduce the maintenance effort?
SIGCPR '99 Proceedings of the 1999 ACM SIGCPR conference on Computer personnel research
IS “maintainability”: should it reduce the maintenance effort?
ACM SIGMIS Database
Understanding software operations support expertise: a revealed causal mapping approach
MIS Quarterly - Special issue on Intensive research in information systems: using qualitative, interpretive, and case methods to study information technology—third installment
Fundamental Laws and Assumptions of Software Maintenance
Empirical Software Engineering
Evaluating Design Metrics on Large-Scale Software
IEEE Software
The Effect of Knowledge Representation Schemes on Maintainability of Knowledge-Based Systems
IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering
Predicting Maintenance Performance Using Object-Oriented Design Complexity Metrics
IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering
Determinants of software volatility: a field study
Journal of Software Maintenance: Research and Practice
The Structural Complexity of Software: An Experimental Test
IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering
From C to Java: a case study in portability, efficiency, and maintenance
ACM-SE 38 Proceedings of the 38th annual on Southeast regional conference
Predicting object-oriented software maintainability using multivariate adaptive regression splines
Journal of Systems and Software
Component dependency in object-oriented software
Journal of Computer Science and Technology
Multiple-parameter coupling metrics for layered component-based software
Software Quality Control
Hierarchical visualization for chance discovery
IEA/AIE'07 Proceedings of the 20th international conference on Industrial, engineering, and other applications of applied intelligent systems
Structuring acyclic process models
Information Systems
Software modernization and replacement decision making in industry: a qualitative study
EASE'06 Proceedings of the 10th international conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering
Hi-index | 48.24 |
An experiment is designed to investigate the relationship between system structure and maintainability. An old, ill-structured system is improved in two sequential stages, yielding three system versions for the study. The primary objectives of the research are to determine how or whether the differences in the systems influence maintenance performance; whether the differences are discernible to programmers; and whether the differences are measurable. Experienced programmers perform a portfolio of maintenance tasks on the systems. Results indicate that system improvements lead to decreased total maintenance time and decreased frequency of ripple effect errors. This suggests that improving old systems may be worthwhile and may yield benefits over the remaining life of the system. System differences are not discernible to programmers; apparently programmers are unable to separate the complexity of the systems from the complexity of the maintenance tasks. This finding suggests a need for further research on the efficacy of subjectively based software metrics. Finally, results indicate that a selected set of automatable, objective complexity metrics reflected both the improvements in the system and programmer maintenance performance. These metrics appear to offer potential as project management tools.