Creating maintainable software : Problems and solutions from a developer's perspective

Sammanfattning

Context: There is no set standard for how to create maintainable code, and the researchon what developers think makes code harder or easier to maintain is lacking.The solutions used today are not based on research, and no established standard forachieving maintainable code exists. Objectives: The study aims to determine what negatively affects software maintainability,design a framework based on that, test it, and evaluate its effectivenessand usefulness. Methods: This qualitative study was conducted as a case study using design scienceresearch methodology. Six developers were interviewed for the study, and threeMaintainability Index calculations were performed. Results: The results identified 6 general issues related to maintainable code anddocumentation. These are related to code quality, documentation practices, andversion control. A framework containing maintainability principles that developersdeemed helpful was created. It was also determined that the developers interviewedthought that a framework for creating maintainable code would be useful and thatthe implementation of such a framework could be done similarly to what was donein the study. The results also indicate that developers see maintainability as broaderthan just code quality.