An approach to predict software maintenance cost based on ripple complexity

Author

Hirota, Toyohiko ; Tohki, Masaharu ; Overstreet, C. Michael ; Hashimoto, Masaaki ; Cherinka, Robert

Author_Institution

Kyushu Inst. of Technol., Iizuka, Japan

fYear

1994

fDate

7-9 Dec 1994

Firstpage

439

Lastpage

444

Abstract

Almost half of a software maintainer´s time is spent trying to understand programs. This means that software maintenance cost prediction depends on software understandability. We have proposed ripple complexity as a means to predict program understandability. This paper describes an experiment to prove the usefulness of ripple complexity. The result of this experiment has shown that ripple complexity is more closely related to program understandability than lines of source code, cyclomatic complexity and function point analysis

Keywords

reverse engineering; software cost estimation; software maintenance; software metrics; cyclomatic complexity; function point analysis; program understanding; ripple analysis; ripple complexity; software maintenance cost prediction; software understandability; source code lines; Algorithm design and analysis; Costs; Information analysis; Maintenance engineering; Reverse engineering; Software engineering; Software maintenance; Software systems; Testing; Turning;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Software Engineering Conference, 1994. Proceedings., 1994 First Asia-Pacific

Conference_Location

Tokyo

Print_ISBN

0-8186-6960-8

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/APSEC.1994.465236

Filename

465236