A case study of source code evolution

Arbi Ghazarian

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

11 Scopus citations

Abstract

Obtaining an accurate characterization of pre-release changes, especially those related to fault corrections, can give indications for the quality of the software development process and its product. The resulting indications can then be leveraged to identify areas for quality improvement within software development organizations. Towards this objective, we studied the evolution of the source code modules in an industrial enterprise resource planning software system spanning a time period of two years from the initial creation of the source code modules to the release of the software product. In this paper, we describe our case study process, and present the frequency distributions of pre-release changes and faults along with lessons learnedfrom the case study. Overall, we found that (a) only 22% of pre-release changes contribute new functionality to the system under development; the remaining majority of the prerelease changes are either fault corrections or code cleanups (b) over 72% of pre-release faults are propagated from upper-stream requirements and design activities (c) fault classes that are the target of most fault detection tools have a low frequency.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationProceedings - 13th European Conference on Software Maintenance and Reengineering, CSMR 2009
Pages159-168
Number of pages10
DOIs
StatePublished - 2009
Externally publishedYes
Event13th European Conference on Software Maintenance and Reengineering, CSMR 2009 - Kaiserslautern, Germany
Duration: Mar 24 2009Mar 27 2009

Publication series

NameProceedings of the European Conference on Software Maintenance and Reengineering, CSMR
ISSN (Print)1534-5351

Other

Other13th European Conference on Software Maintenance and Reengineering, CSMR 2009
Country/TerritoryGermany
CityKaiserslautern
Period3/24/093/27/09

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Software

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'A case study of source code evolution'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this