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The Impact of UML Documentation on Software Maintenance: An Experimental Evaluation

Authors:

Lionel C. Briand,

Siw Elisabeth Hove,

Yvan LabicheAuthors Info & Claims

IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, Volume 32, Issue 6

Pages 365 - 381

https://doi.org/10.1109/TSE.2006.59

Published: 01 June 2006 Publication History

Abstract

The Unified Modeling Language (UML) is becoming the de facto standard for software analysis and design modeling. However, there is still significant resistance to model-driven development in many software organizations because it is perceived to be expensive and not necessarily cost-effective. Hence, it is important to investigate the benefits obtained from modeling. As a first step in this direction, this paper reports on controlled experiments, spanning two locations, that investigate the impact of UML documentation on software maintenance. Results show that, for complex tasks and past a certain learning curve, the availability of UML documentation may result in significant improvements in the functional correctness of changes as well as the quality of their design. However, there does not seem to be any saving of time. For simpler tasks, the time needed to update the UML documentation may be substantial compared with the potential benefits, thus motivating the need for UML tools with better support for software maintenance.

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cover image IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering

IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering Volume 32, Issue 6

June 2006

83 pages

ISSN:0098-5589

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Copyright © 2006.

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IEEE Press

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Published: 01 June 2006

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Cited By

Romeo JRaglianti MNagy CLanza MBaysal OLinares-Vasquez MMoran KSteinmacher I(2024)Capturing and Understanding the Drift Between Design, Implementation, and DocumentationProceedings of the 32nd IEEE/ACM International Conference on Program Comprehension10.1145/3643916.3644399(382-386)Online publication date: 15-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3643916.3644399
Cao CSchneider SFerreyra NVerwer SPanichella AScandariato RRoychoudhury APaiva AAbreu RStorey M(2024)CATMA: Conformance Analysis Tool For Microservice ApplicationsProceedings of the 2024 IEEE/ACM 46th International Conference on Software Engineering: Companion Proceedings10.1145/3639478.3640022(59-63)Online publication date: 14-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3639478.3640022
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