Tailoring the NFR Framework for Measuring Software Ecosystems Health
Simone da Silva Amorim, Sandro Santos Andrade, John D. McGregor, Eduardo Santana de Almeida, Christina Chávez · 2018
A healthy software ecosystem is capable of maintaining productivity and attractiveness, even in the face of problems and disruptions.Some studies have used software metrics to measure the health of a software ecosystem; however, there is little agreement on how to measure those aspects related to software architecture nor how to weigh their influence on the health state of the ecosystem.This paper introduces an approach to measuring and assessing the state of a software ecosystem's health that is aware of the architectural practices used.The approach uses a variation of the softgoal interdependence graph belonging to NFR (Non-Functional Requirements) framework on goal modeling.The key idea is to model and estimate influences of architectural practices on the health indicators.This research carried out an exploratory case study in the KDE ecosystem.KDE architectural practices were identified and analyzed with the support of our proposed practice-aware approach.The findings present the measurable influences that can be used to support decision-making processes related to architectural practices.