Paper Info
Title
Expert Maintainers' Strategies and Needs when Understanding Software: A Case Study Approach
Abstract
Accelerating the learning curve of software maintainers working on systems with which they have little familiarity motivated this study.A working hypothesis was that automated methods are needed to provide a fast, rough grasp of a system, to enable practitioners not familiar with it, to commence maintenance with a level of confidence as if they had this familiarity.Expert maintainers were interviewed regarding theirstrategies and information needs to test this hypothesis.The overriding message is their need for a "starting point" when analyzing code.They also need standardized, reliable and communicable information about a system as an equivalent to knowledge available only to developers or experienced maintainers.These needs are addressed by the proposed "rough-cut" approach to program comprehension.Work underway assesses the suitability of using data mining techniques on data derived from source code to provide high level models of a system and module interrelationships.
Year
DOI
Venue
2001
10.1109/APSEC.2001.991489
APSEC
Keywords
Field
DocType
case study approach,communicable information,expert maintainers,automated method,source code,working hypothesis,experienced maintainers,overriding message,high level model,understanding software,module interrelationship,data mining technique,reverse engineering,information need,software maintenance,standardisation,learning curve,data mining
Static program analysis,Information needs,Systems engineering,Software engineering,Computer science,Software system,Software maintenance,Software construction,Program comprehension,Learning curve,Software development
Conference
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
10
0.81
27
Authors
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Christos Tjortjis117324.40
Paul Layzell230638.28