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1 Chapter 9 Software Evolution

This document discusses software evolution and maintenance. It covers topics like the inevitability of software change, the importance of evolving existing software systems to maintain business value, common software evolution processes, and strategies for managing legacy software systems. Key points include that most software budgets are spent changing existing systems rather than new development, and that maintenance costs are typically much higher than development costs and increase as software ages.

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sameen khan
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221 views23 pages

1 Chapter 9 Software Evolution

This document discusses software evolution and maintenance. It covers topics like the inevitability of software change, the importance of evolving existing software systems to maintain business value, common software evolution processes, and strategies for managing legacy software systems. Key points include that most software budgets are spent changing existing systems rather than new development, and that maintenance costs are typically much higher than development costs and increase as software ages.

Uploaded by

sameen khan
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Software Evolution

Chapter 9 Software evolution 1


Topics covered

✧ Evolution processes
▪ Change processes for software systems
✧ Program evolution dynamics
▪ Understanding software evolution
✧ Software maintenance
▪ Making changes to operational software systems
✧ Legacy system management
▪ Making decisions about software change

Chapter 9 Software evolution 2


Software change

✧ Software change is inevitable


▪ New requirements emerge when the software is used;
▪ The business environment changes;
▪ Errors must be repaired;
▪ New computers and equipment is added to the system;
▪ The performance or reliability of the system may have to be
improved.
✧ A key problem for all organizations is implementing and
managing change to their existing software systems.

Chapter 9 Software evolution 3


Importance of evolution

✧ Organizations have huge investments in their software


systems - they are critical business assets.
✧ To maintain the value of these assets to the business,
they must be changed and updated.
✧ The majority of the software budget in large companies
is devoted to changing and evolving existing software
rather than developing new software.

Chapter 9 Software evolution 4


A spiral model of development and evolution

Chapter 9 Software evolution 5


Evolution and servicing

Chapter 9 Software evolution 6


Evolution and servicing

✧ Evolution
▪ The stage in a software system’s life cycle where it is in
operational use and is evolving as new requirements are
proposed and implemented in the system.
✧ Servicing
▪ At this stage, the software remains useful but the only changes
made are those required to keep it operational i.e. bug fixes and
changes to reflect changes in the software’s environment. No
new functionality is added.
✧ Phase-out
▪ The software may still be used but no further changes are made
to it.

Chapter 9 Software evolution 7


Evolution processes

✧ Software evolution processes depend on


▪ The type of software being maintained;
▪ The development processes used;
▪ The skills and experience of the people involved.
✧ Proposals for change are the driver for system evolution.
▪ Should be linked with components that are affected by the
change, thus allowing the cost and impact of the change to be
estimated.
✧ Change identification and evolution continues throughout
the system lifetime.

Chapter 9 Software evolution 8


Change identification and evolution processes

Chapter 9 Software evolution 9


Change implementation

Chapter 9 Software evolution 10


Change implementation

✧ Iteration of the development process where the revisions


to the system are designed, implemented and tested.
✧ A critical difference is that the first stage of change
implementation may involve program understanding,
especially if the original system developers are not
responsible for the change implementation.
✧ During the program understanding phase, you have to
understand how the program is structured, how it
delivers functionality and how the proposed change
might affect the program.

Chapter 9 Software evolution 11


Urgent change requests

✧ Urgent changes may have to be implemented without


going through all stages of the software engineering
process
▪ If a serious system fault has to be repaired to allow normal
operation to continue;
▪ If changes to the system’s environment (e.g. an OS upgrade)
have unexpected effects;
▪ If there are business changes that require a very rapid response
(e.g. the release of a competing product).

Chapter 9 Software evolution 12


Maintenance costs

✧ Usually greater than development costs (2* to


100* depending on the application).
✧ Affected by both technical and non-technical
factors.
✧ Increases as software is maintained.
Maintenance corrupts the software structure so
makes further maintenance more difficult.
✧ Ageing software can have high support costs
(e.g. old languages, compilers etc.).

Chapter 9 Software evolution 13


Figure 9.9 Development and maintenance costs

Chapter 9 Software evolution 14


Maintenance cost factors

✧ Team stability
▪ Maintenance costs are reduced if the same staff are involved
with them for some time.
✧ Contractual responsibility
▪ The developers of a system may have no contractual
responsibility for maintenance so there is no incentive to design
for future change.
✧ Staff skills
▪ Maintenance staff are often inexperienced and have limited
domain knowledge.
✧ Program age and structure
▪ As programs age, their structure is degraded and they become
harder to understand and change.
Chapter 9 Software evolution 15
Maintenance prediction

✧ Maintenance prediction is concerned with assessing


which parts of the system may cause problems and have
high maintenance costs
▪ Change acceptance depends on the maintainability of the
components affected by the change;
▪ Implementing changes degrades the system and reduces its
maintainability;
▪ Maintenance costs depend on the number of changes and costs
of change depend on maintainability.

Chapter 9 Software evolution 16


System re-engineering

✧ Re-structuring or re-writing part or all of a


legacy system without changing its
functionality.
✧ Applicable where some but not all sub-systems
of a larger system require frequent
maintenance.
✧ Re-engineering involves adding effort to make
them easier to maintain. The system may be re-
structured and re-documented.

Chapter 9 Software evolution 17


Advantages of reengineering

✧ Reduced risk
▪ There is a high risk in new software development. There may be
development problems, staffing problems and specification
problems.
✧ Reduced cost
▪ The cost of re-engineering is often significantly less than the
costs of developing new software.

Chapter 9 Software evolution 18


Reengineering process activities

✧ Source code translation


▪ Convert code to a new language.
✧ Reverse engineering
▪ Analyse the program to understand it;
✧ Program structure improvement
▪ Restructure automatically for understandability;
✧ Program modularisation
▪ Reorganise the program structure;
✧ Data reengineering
▪ Clean-up and restructure system data.

Chapter 9 Software evolution 19


‘Bad smells’ in program code

✧ Duplicate code
▪ The same or very similar code may be included at different
places in a program. This can be removed and implemented as
a single method or function that is called as required.
✧ Long methods
▪ If a method is too long, it should be redesigned as a number of
shorter methods.
✧ Switch (case) statements
▪ These often involve duplication, where the switch depends on
the type of a value. The switch statements may be scattered
around a program. In object-oriented languages, you can often
use polymorphism to achieve the same thing.

Chapter 9 Software evolution 20


Legacy system management

✧ Organisations that rely on legacy systems must choose


a strategy for evolving these systems
▪ Scrap the system completely and modify business processes so
that it is no longer required;
▪ Continue maintaining the system;
▪ Transform the system by re-engineering to improve its
maintainability;
▪ Replace the system with a new system.
✧ The strategy chosen should depend on the system
quality and its business value.

Chapter 9 Software evolution 21


Figure 9.13 An example of a legacy system
assessment

Chapter 9 Software evolution 22


Legacy system categories

✧ Low quality, low business value


▪ These systems should be scrapped.
✧ Low-quality, high-business value
▪ These make an important business contribution but are
expensive to maintain. Should be re-engineered or replaced if a
suitable system is available.
✧ High-quality, low-business value
▪ Replace with COTS, scrap completely or maintain.
✧ High-quality, high business value
▪ Continue in operation using normal system maintenance.

Chapter 9 Software evolution 23

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