Causes of premature aging during software development

Abstract

Much work has been done on the subject of what happens to software architecture during maintenance activities. There seems to be a consensus that it degrades during the evolution of the software. More recent work shows that this degradation occurs even during development activities: design decisions are either adjusted or forgotten. Some studies have looked into the causes of this degradation, but these have mostly done so at a very high level. This study examines three projects at code level. Three architectural pre-implementation designs are compared with their post-implementation design counterparts, with special attention paid to the causes of the changes. We found many negative changes causing anti-patterns, at the package, class, and method levels. After analysis of the code, we were able to find the specific reasons for the poor design decisions. Although the underlying causes are varied, they can be grouped into three basic categories: knowledge problems, artifact problems, and management problems. This categorization shows that anti-pattern causes are varied and are not all due to the developers. The main conclusion is that promoting awareness of anti-patterns to developers is insufficient to prevent them since some of the causes escape their grasp.

Software team processes: A taxonomy

“…The resulting software product satisfied the industrial partner, but did not implement all the requirements. Also, some quality problems were identified in a previous article [22], some of which can be linked to communication breakdowns. Overall, the project was considered a partial success.…”

“…Web tools can be used to communicate with remotely located team members. Similarly, collocated teams are not constantly involved in teamwork episodes: A considerable amount of the time spent by collocated teams involves working alone focusing on a task [22].…”

“…Similarly, a collocated setting does not imply constant GAs, as much of the work is still performed alone [22]. At the same time, it is possible to perform group work while sitting alone in a cubicle, with the use of whiteboard software, for example [24].…”

Taxonomy for software teamwork measurement

“…Web tools can be used to communicate with remotely located team members. Similarly, collocated teams are not constantly involved in teamwork episodes: a considerable amount of time spent by collocated teams involves working alone focused on a task . But when the programmers sit down to actually write the code, they are involved in IA episodes.…”

“…Group activity episodes are subject to the same problems as IA episodes. Similarly, a collocated setting does not imply constant GA episodes, as much of the work is still performed solo . At the same time, it is possible to perform group work while sitting alone in a cubicle, with the use of virtual whiteboard software, for example .…”