Análise do processo de manutenção de software com enfoque na utilização dos custos de mudanças

Abstract

The increasing demand for new computer applications and the evolution of its complexity makes increasingly important the correct application of effort in the process of software development. Despite the difficulty in obtaining data, empirical studies on the evolution of software can assist in the creation of models and theories that enhance development efforts. Having access to a database of information of more than five years of change requests (including improvements and fixes) of the same development organization, the research problem was to obtain indicators of development projects that were related to higher costs of change. From this formulation, was set to perform the objective analysis of the costs of change and, therefore, the cases with the greatest development times were classified (using the ODC - Orthogonal Defect Classification) analyzed individually, compared with each other and with other studies. Resulting of the work for examining costs of software changes, ranges of values are presented (early start of production and at the end of twenty months of production use) software metrics for which comparisons are made and eventually may be used as a comparison to other projects of the same or other companies. There were characteristics, in a specific project, that proposes to associate the Package tangle index at the time of entry into production, with the main impact of the size ODC. This association can be regarded as the main indication related to software maintenance costs, and by establishing an association between this metric observed during the development of systems, can reduce future costs in the software maintenance phase.