It mainly focuses on how software should be maintained in order to prevent it from deterioration. In general, it must be easy to understand the software how it works, what it does, and why it does it the way it does, easy to find what needs to be change, easy to make changes and easy to check that the changes have not introduced any bugs. Reliability, availability, and maintainability sebok. Reliability, availability, and maintainability ram or rma are system design attributes that have significant impacts on the sustainment or total life cycle costs lcc of a developed system. Keywords software aging, software architecture, software deterioration, software maintainability, software measurement. Open source software development should strive for even. However, existing definitions of maintainability, such as the halstead volume, mccabes cyclomatic complexity or the sei maintainability index provide a very poor understanding of what maintainability is how it. Software deterioration and maintainability model smm developed by 42 considers both aspects of software maintainability and deterioration. How to effectively define and measure maintainability. Software maintainability is defined as the degree to which an application is understood, repaired, or enhanced. Our hypothesis is that this is discernible when measuring maintainability of a system. Eight software systems were used for initial construction and calibrating the automated assessment models, and an additional six software systems.
There is an accompanying video training available as well. Updating the software environment, reducing its deterioration over time, and enhancing features. Developing maintainable software software sustainability. The four pillars of maintainable software codeproject. There are no straightforward solutions for the maintenance problems at lost boys. In general, it must be easy to understand the software how it works, what it does, and why it does it the way it does, easy to find what needs to be change, easy to make changes and easy to check that.
Addition of new functionality or the adaptation of software to meet new requirements for the customer needs. Software maintenance understanding the 4 types endertech. It identifies a set of software measures based on correlations published in empirical studies. Adding new features that deliver value to an organization should be a moment to celebrate rather than fear. Two problem areas have you ever heard of a piece of software that at its initial. Maintainability and flexibility at the software level are of predominant importance to drive innovation at the business process level.
Maintainability is the ease with which a product can be maintained in order to isolate defects or their cause, correct defects or their cause, meet new requirements, make future maintenance easier, or cope with a changed environment. The first time i changed the oil filter of my car first car in high school i smashed my knuckles against a grimy block of metal. The probability that a product performs its intended. Keywords software metrics, halstead measure, maintainability, modifiability, software architecture, software deterioration. Software maintainability is important because it is approximately 75% of the cost related to a project. Controlling the rate of software deterioration author. We propose a model that incorporates both of these aspects, which gives us a vocabulary and a more formal tool than before, and allows us to discuss how to. The focus of the type of maintenance is to prevent the deterioration of your software as it continues to adapt and change. The software metrics study was initiated to propose metrics of the maintainability of the software produced by the mdsf project. The maintainability of software depends on a few different factors. Maintainability concepts were included early in the life cycle, where maintenance planning and optimum. A measure of effort must include time, resources and expertise. Due to the complexity of tracking maintenance behaviors, it is difficult to accurately predict the cost and risk of maintenance after delivery of software products. Citeseerx document details isaac councill, lee giles, pradeep teregowda.
Jul 19, 2017 maintainability is the ease with which a product can be maintained in order to isolate defects or their cause, correct defects or their cause, meet new requirements, make future maintenance easier, or cope with a changed environment. By improving usability and increasing performance, you can quickly gain an early. The maintainability index is calculated with certain formulae from linesofcode measures, mccabe measures and halstead complexity measures. Constructing and testing software maintainability assessment. Software maintainability is no longer a nice to have. The importance of maintaining software updates the main benefits of maintaining software updates are that security remains on point, usability is firing on all cylinders, and your software is compatible with other all the software you use. In theory, you write a bunch of software, test it, make sure its working perfectly then you. Software rot, also known as bit rot, code rot, software erosion, software decay or software entropy is either a slow deterioration of software quality over time or its diminishing responsiveness that will eventually lead to software becoming faulty, unusable, or in need of upgrade. The reality facing businesses of all sizes is that software can and will deteriorate with the inevitable. Similar to system safety and software safety we have many ram templates, examples, and sources of failure rate data on file. Software metrics are used to quantitatively characterize the essential features of software. It may have been my lack of experience or improper tools.
It is a function of the equipment design and installation, personnel availability in the required skill levels, adequacy of maintenance procedures and test equipment, and the physical. In this post i will summarize the ten guidelines and look at some of my code to see where i improved and what i can do better. Software maintenance is an essential part of the software development life cycle. Increased software complexity means that maintenance and enhancement projects will take longer, will cost more, and will result in more errors. Due to the complexity of tracking maintenance behaviors, it is difficult to.
Apr 18, 2020 preventive maintenance helps the software to become more scalable, stable, understandable, maintainable. Maintainability are the relative costs of fixing, updating, extending, operating and servicing an entity over its lifetime. Preventive changes are focused in decreasing the deterioration of your software in the long run. Software maintainability is the degree of an application to. Maintenance on software goes beyond fixing bugs, which is one of the four types of software change.
Maintainability is a multifaceted quality attribute each of the facets must be analyzed to objectively measure it. Controlling the rate of software deterioration 1997. Its objectives are to define the concept of maintainability, to describe the factors influencing it and to define criteria by which maintainability can be quantitatively. There are many definitions of software maintainability, in essence very similar 3,4,16,42. Aug 28, 2019 the importance of maintaining software updates the main benefits of maintaining software updates are that security remains on point, usability is firing on all cylinders, and your software is compatible with other all the software you use. The maintainability testing shall be specified in terms of the effort required to effect a change under each of the following four categories. We propose a model that incorporates both of these aspects, which gives us a vocabulary. Maintainability is ultimately measured by the effort required to fulfill a change request, and many would view with skepticism findings based solely on the values of the mi metric. Software maintainability is one important aspect in the evaluation of software evolution of a software product. Maintainabilitythe ease with which a software system or component can be modified to correct faults, improve performance, or other attributes, or adapt to a changed environment ieee 1990. Also useful are degradation models, where some characteristic of the. Sep 03, 2011 an example of a discrete maintainability parameter is the number of maintenance actions completed in some time t, whereas an example of a continuous maintainability parameter is the time to complete a maintenance action. Request pdf software deterioration and maintainability a model proposal in this paper, we connect the notion of software maintainability with the problem. Software deterioration will happen the reality facing businesses of all sizes is that software can and will deteriorate with the inevitable maintenance implemented during its lifecycle.
Reliability, maintainability, and availability ram are three system attributes. Reliability, availability, maintainability and safety. Reliability, availability, and maintainability the mitre. Reliability engineering has important interfaces with safety, quality, maintainability, supportability, cost, test, and design engineering. Evolution keeps software fit for use and can be seen as the overlap between the maintenance activities and the development of new features on top of an existing code base mansurov 02. We propose a model that incorporates both of these aspects, which gives us a vocabulary and a more formal tool than before, and allows us to discuss how to maintain software so as not to make it deteriorate. Software rot, also known as bit rot, code rot, software erosion, software decay or software. In practice, when you do that, you find that the specification o. Jun 14, 2019 software deterioration will happen the reality facing businesses of all sizes is that software can and will deteriorate with the inevitable maintenance implemented during its lifecycle.
This maintenance acts as medicine to prevent the problems. In some cases, maintainability involves a system of continuous improvement learning from the past in order to improve the ability to maintain systems, or improve reliability of systems based on maintenance experience. Restructuring the data and code of the software are implemented in preventive maintenance. A quantitative approach to software maintainability. Comparative study of the factors that affect maintainability. Software maintainability free demo video explanation. Maintainability, then, is a measure of the ease and rapidity with which a system or equipment can be restored to operational status following a failure. Chan, taizan and ho, teck, maintaing software maintainability. Maintainability is ultimately measured by the effort required to fulfill a change request, and many would view with skepticism findings based solely on the values of. Introduction many resources are spent on software maintenance. The maintainability of a system can be measured in. In general any software development manager is familiar with this definition of effort as it applies to creating software.
Reliability analysis is critical for understanding component. A quantitative approach to software maintainability prediction. Reconstructing software architecture documentation for. In software engineering, these activities are known as software maintenance cf. A good way to look at basic maintainability concepts is in terms of functions which are analogous to those in reliability.
Normal maintenance of software and systems may also cause software rot. We propose a model that incorporates both of these aspects, which gives us a vocabulary and a more formal tool than before, and allows us to. Osqr video what is software maintainability, and why does it. The standard definition of reliability is the probability of zero. In telecommunication and several other engineering fields, the term maintainability has the following meanings.
The paper investigates the use of metrics in assessing software maintainability by presenting and comparing seven software maintainability assessment models. Software improvement group sig recently released building maintainable software, ten guidelines for futureproof code. A quantitative approach to software maintainability prediction abstract. Our experience in ram dates back to our inception in 1986. This is one reason why so many projects churn out software of poor quality and consistently miss deadlines. This document is a first step towards the construction of a maintainability prediction model. Software deterioration and maintainability a model proposal.
A definition of maintainability with a few examples. In this paper, we connect the notion of software maintainability with the problem of software deterioration. Maintainability means fixing, updating, servicing and to modify the system or update the software for performance improvements or for the correction of faults. One of the most important factors that contributes to a software projects success is how maintainable the software is. An undesirable side effect of software evolution is deterioration. Hcrq is fully experienced in ram program plans, and reliability, availability, maintainability ram analyses and demonstrations. Software deterioration and maintainability a model. Manageabilityhow efficiently and easily a software system can be monitored and maintained to keep the system performing, secure, and running smoothly. Detailed comparisons between periods of relative stability and deterioration might reveal the underlying reasons for deterioration in mi. Aug 17, 2018 in theory, you write a bunch of software, test it, make sure its working perfectlythen you can lock it away someplace take it out 10 years later and itll still work perfectly. Deterioration effects the maintainability of the software. Closely related concepts in the software engineering domain are evolvability, modifiability, technical debt, and code smells. Maintainability testing shall use a model of the maintainability requirements of the softwaresystem. Citeseerx software deterioration and maintainability a.
In particular, when a program contains multiple parts which function at arms. Measuring software maintainability is nontrivial and there exists no single metric to measure it accurately. Software complexity is widely regarded as an important determinant of software maintenance costs boehm 1981. Additionally, the ram attributes impact the ability to perform the intended mission and affect overall mission success. Thus, producing software that is easy to maintain may potentially save large costs. See my reading page for more books on software quality. Maintainability is defined as the ease with which changes can be made to a software system. As said this book is preparation for the quality software developer foundation certificate in maintainability. An entity with relatively low costs in these areas is considered maintainable whereas an entity with high costs may be considered unmaintainable or high maintenance. If the maintainability of a system is poor, deterioration of the software will increase and the system rapidly looses its value for stakeholders. Ability of a computer program to be retained in its original form, and to be restored to that form in case of a failure. In computerized system, a software defect or fault can be the cause of a. In theory, you write a bunch of software, test it, make sure its working perfectlythen you can lock it away someplace take it out 10 years later and itll still work perfectly. Upgrades, patches, and applying changes such as apis that enable applications to communicate with other products or services can all cause the software.