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The dimensions of healthy maintenance

Published: 13 September 1982 Publication History

Abstract

What characterizes “healthy” or “satisfactory” software maintenance? How can we know it when we see it? This paper gives initial answers to these questions. We first argue the need for objectively measurable maintenance performance criteria in judging the “adequacy” of maintenance and present a set of criteria for judging maintenance performance in a particular software environment. We then subject the criteria to a practical test by applying them in this environment. We show how applying the criteria enables an informed overall maintenance performance appraisal, locates general maintenance problems, stimulates suggestions for improving maintenance on individual projects, allows these projects' maintenance to be compared and the projects ordered for improvement, and assesses the potential effectiveness of the suggestions in new project maintenance. We also sketch how criteria application can be generalized to software development monitoring and design methodology evaluation.

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Arnold, R.S. On the Generation and Use of Quantitative Criteria for Assessing Software Maintenance Quality. (tentative title) Ph.D Dissertation, Computer Science Department, The University of Maryland, College Park, Md. To appear, Fall 1982.
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Cited By

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  • (1996)An Economic Model to Estimate Software Rewriting and Replacement TimesIEEE Transactions on Software Engineering10.1109/32.53695822:8(580-598)Online publication date: 1-Aug-1996
  • (1992)An annotated bibliography on software maintenanceACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes10.1145/130840.13085217:2(79-84)Online publication date: 1-Apr-1992

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cover image ACM Conferences
ICSE '82: Proceedings of the 6th international conference on Software engineering
September 1982
439 pages

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IEEE Computer Society Press

Washington, DC, United States

Publication History

Published: 13 September 1982

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View all
  • (1996)An Economic Model to Estimate Software Rewriting and Replacement TimesIEEE Transactions on Software Engineering10.1109/32.53695822:8(580-598)Online publication date: 1-Aug-1996
  • (1992)An annotated bibliography on software maintenanceACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes10.1145/130840.13085217:2(79-84)Online publication date: 1-Apr-1992

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