The impact of software design structure on product maintenance costs and measurement of economic benefits of product redesign
Name
666413734-MIT.pdf
Description
Full printable version
Size
8.48 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
2032e4caf7c496e4d536ab5a95e607a0
Author(s)
Akaikine, Andrei
Advisor(s)
Alan D. MacCormack.
Alternative Title
impact of software architecture on product maintenance efforts and measurement of economic benefits of product redesign
Date Issued
2010
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
This paper reports results of an empirical study that aimed to demonstrate the link between software product design structure and engineers' effort to perform a code modification in the context of a corrective maintenance task. First, this paper reviews the current state of the art in engineering economics of the maintenance phase of software lifecycle. Secondly, a measure of software product complexity suitable to assess maintainability of a software system is developed. This measure is used to analyze the design structure change that happened between two versions of a mature software product. The product selected for this study underwent a significant re-design between two studied versions. Thirdly, an experiment is designed to measure the effort engineers spend designing a code modification associated with a corrective change request. These effort measurements are used to demonstrate the effect of product design complexity on engineers' productivity. It is asserted in the paper that engineer's productivity improvements have a significant economic value and can be used to justify investments into re-design of an existing software product.
Description
Thesis (S.M. in System Design and Management)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division, 2010.
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 68-71).
Subjects
Engineering Systems Division.
System Design and Management Program.
MIT Department
System Design and Management Program.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Engineering Systems Division
Terms of Use
M.I.T. theses are protected by
copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but
reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written
permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.
copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but
reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written
permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.
Persistent DSpace Link
