Chapter 7 – Software Evolution

Lecture 1

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

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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.

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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.

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A spiral model of development and evolution

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Evolution and servicing

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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.

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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.

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Change identification and evolution processes

Chapter 9 Software evolution 9

The software evolution process

Chapter 9 Software evolution 10

Change implementation

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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.

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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).

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The emergency repair process

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Agile methods and evolution

 Agile methods are based on incremental development so

the transition from development to evolution is a
seamless one.
▪ Evolution is simply a continuation of the development process
based on frequent system releases.
 Automated regression testing is particularly valuable
when changes are made to a system.
 Changes may be expressed as additional user stories.

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Change is inevitable

 The system requirements are likely to change

while the system is being developed because
the environment is changing. Therefore a
delivered system won't meet its requirements!
 Systems are tightly coupled with their environment.
When a system is installed in an
environment it changes that environment and
therefore changes the system requirements.
 Systems MUST be changed if they
are to remain useful in an environment.

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Key points

 Software development and evolution can be thought of

as an integrated, iterative process that can be
represented using a spiral model.
 For custom systems, the costs of software maintenance
usually exceed the software development costs.
 The process of software evolution is driven by requests
for changes and includes change impact analysis,
release planning and change implementation.

Chapter 9 Software evolution 17

Chapter 9 – Software Evolution

Lecture 2

Chapter 9 Software evolution 18

Software maintenance

 Modifying a program after it has been put into use.

 The term is mostly used for changing custom software.
Generic software products are said to evolve to create
new versions.
 Maintenance does not normally involve major changes to
the system’s architecture.
 Changes are implemented by modifying existing
components and adding new components to the system.

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Types of maintenance

 Maintenance to repair software faults

▪ Changing a system to correct deficiencies in the way meets its
requirements.
 Maintenance to adapt software to a different operating
environment
▪ Changing a system so that it operates in a different environment
(computer, OS, etc.) from its initial implementation.
 Maintenance to add to or modify the system’s
functionality
▪ Modifying the system to satisfy new requirements.

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Figure 9.8 Maintenance effort distribution

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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.).

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Figure 9.9 Development and maintenance costs

Chapter 9 Software evolution 23

Maintenance cost factors

 Team stability
▪ Maintenance costs are reduced if the same staff are involved
with them for some time.
 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.

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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.

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Maintenance prediction

Chapter 9 Software evolution 26

Change prediction

 Predicting the number of changes requires and

understanding of the relationships between a system
and its environment.
 Tightly coupled systems require changes whenever the
environment is changed.
 Factors influencing this relationship are
▪ Number and complexity of system interfaces;
▪ Number of inherently volatile system requirements;
▪ The business processes where the system is used.

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Complexity metrics

 Predictions of maintainability can be made by assessing

the complexity of system components.
 Studies have shown that most maintenance effort is
spent on a relatively small number of system
components.
 Complexity depends on
▪ Complexity of control structures;
▪ Complexity of data structures;
▪ Object, method (procedure) and module size.

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Process metrics

 Process metrics may be used to assess maintainability

▪ Number of requests for corrective maintenance;
▪ Average time required for impact analysis;
▪ Average time taken to implement a change request;
▪ Number of outstanding change requests.
 If any or all of these is increasing, this may indicate a
decline in maintainability.

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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.

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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.

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The reengineering process

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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.

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Figure 9.12 Reengineering approaches

Chapter 9 Software evolution 34

Reengineering cost factors

 The quality of the software to be reengineered.

 The tool support available for reengineering.
 The extent of the data conversion which is required.
 The availability of expert staff for reengineering.
▪ This can be a problem with old systems based on technology
that is no longer widely used.

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Preventative maintenance by refactoring

 Refactoring is the process of making improvements to a

program to slow down degradation through change.
 You can think of refactoring as ‘preventative
maintenance’ that reduces the problems of future
change.
 Refactoring involves modifying a program to improve its
structure, reduce its complexity or make it easier to
understand.
 When you refactor a program, you should not add
functionality but rather concentrate on program
improvement.
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Refactoring and reengineering

 Re-engineering takes place after a system has been

maintained for some time and maintenance costs are
increasing. You use automated tools to process and re-
engineer a legacy system to create a new system that is
more maintainable.
 Refactoring is a continuous process of improvement
throughout the development and evolution process. It is
intended to avoid the structure and code degradation
that increases the costs and difficulties of maintaining a
system.

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Key points

 There are 3 types of software maintenance, namely bug

fixing, modifying software to work in a new environment,
and implementing new or changed requirements.
 Software re-engineering is concerned with re-structuring
and re-documenting software to make it easier to
understand and change.
 Refactoring, making program changes that preserve
functionality, is a form of preventative maintenance.

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