A Pilot Software Maintainability Study of a Scientific Program Library
Brad Carter, Tushar A. Dode, Bhushan Nene, Chitturi Prasad · 1993
This report describes an exploratory pilot project that serves as the first phase of a software maintenance study conducted for the Information Technology Laboratory located at the U. S. Corps of Engineers Waterways Experiment Station in Vicksburg, Mississippi. The full study, begun in May 1993, has the following goals: 1. To determine appropriate software maintenance measures for the Corps of Engineers software environment to assist COE personnel in the efficient and effective management of the software maintenance process. 2. To explore the relationship of various software product measures (design metrics and code metrics) with maintenance metrics. 3. To develop cost/effort estimation models for software maintenance based on measurable characteristics of software products and projected software usage. 4. To develop guidelines for controlling software development in order to minimize maintenance costs. 5. To design a software maintenance database and a methodology for maintenance metrics data collection. The seven-month exploratory pilot project, reported here, is a study of nine software products selected by WES/ITL professional staff. 2. Background