A methodology for constructing maintainability model of object-oriented design

It is obvious that qualities of software design heavily affects on qualities of software ultimately developed. One of claimed advantages of object-oriented paradigm is the ease of maintenance. The main goal of this work is to propose a methodology for constructing maintainability model of object-oriented software design model using three techniques. Two subcharacteristics of maintainability: understandability and modifiability are focused in this work. A controlled experiment is performed in order to construct maintainability models of object-oriented designs using the experimental data. The first maintainability model is constructed using metrics-discriminant technique. This technique analyzes the pattern of correlation between maintainability levels and structural complexity design metrics applying discriminant analysis. The second one is built using weighted-score-level technique. The technique uses a weighted sum method by combining understandability and modifiability levels which are converted from understandability and modifiability scores. The third one is created using weighted-predicted-level technique. Weighted-predicted-level uses a weighted sum method by combining predicted understandability and modifiability level, obtained from applying understandability and modifiability models. This work presents comparison of maintainability models obtained from three techniques.