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Measurement and defect modeling for a legacy software system

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Annals of Software Engineering

Abstract

This paper analyzes the quality of a large-scale legacy software system using selected metrics. Quality measurements include defect information collected during product development and in-field operation. Other software metrics include measurements on various product and process attributes, including design, size, change, and complexity. Preliminary analyses revealed the high degree of skew in our data and a weak correlation between defects and software metrics. Tree-based models were then used to uncover relationships between defects and software metrics, and to identify high-defect modules together with their associated measurement characteristics. As results presented in tree forms are natural to the decision process and are easy to understand, tree-based modeling is shown to be suitable for change solicitation and useful in guiding remedial actions for quality improvement.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. IBM Software Solutions Toronto Laboratory, 1150 Eglington Avenue East, Mail Station 4T/881, M3C 1H7, North York, Ontario, Canada

    Joel Troster & Jeff Tian

Authors
  1. Joel Troster
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  2. Jeff Tian
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• IBM is a trademark of International Business Machines Corporation.

• REFINE and Software Refinery are trademarks of Reasoning Systems Inc.

• SAS is a trademark of the SAS Institute Inc.

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Troster, J., Tian, J. Measurement and defect modeling for a legacy software system. Ann Software Eng 1, 95–118 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02249047

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