A Survey of Key Factors Affecting Software Maintainability

Today software quality is a major point of concern and it is important to be able to assess the maintainability of a software system. Maintainability is the ability of the system to undergo modifications with a degree of ease. These changes could impact interfaces, components, and features when adding or modifying the functionality and meeting the new customer´s requirements to cope with the changing environment. This paper describes the several types of vital factors that affect the maintainability of software systems as proposed by different researchers in different software maintainability models. These factors play a crucial role in the maintainability assessments. The maintainability models can be used to improve the quality of the software product so that maintenance can be performed efficiently and effectively.