A Framework for the Management of Preventive Maintenance

软件在我们的日常生活中扮演着至关重要的角色，因为我们越来越多的活动涉及使用软件系统，从在线银行交易和电子政务服务到手机中的移动的应用程序。然而，软件系统必须不断更新，以满足新的客户需求，修复错误，提高性能和响应时间，并采用新的技术和基础设施。执行上述维护活动的成本在很大程度上取决于软件系统的基本设计质量。一般来说，设计不好的软件系统需要更多的时间和精力来进行更改，反之亦然。 如今，有几种技术和工具可以分析软件系统，并发现提高设计质量的机会。然而，这些机会并不同等重要和有益。对于软件维护人员来说，执行手动检查来评估其影响非常耗时且难以承受，特别是当他们的数量很大并且他们要解决不同类型的设计问题时。 拟议的研究旨在通过开发一个框架，自动评估和优先级的设计改进机会的基础上，他们的风险和利益，将软件设计质量的改进转化为一个有纪律的，系统的，和工具支持的做法。建议的研究结果将有助于有效降低现有软件系统的维护成本，从而导致更可靠的软件，更少的错误，更快的新功能发布时间，更低的软件/服务价格，以及更好的客户满意度。

Software plays a critical role in our everyday life as more and more of our activities involve the use of software systems from online bank transactions and e-government services to mobile applications in our phones. However, software systems must be constantly updated to address new customer needs, fix errors, improve the performance and response time, and adopt new technologies and infrastructures. The cost of performing the aforementioned maintenance activities highly depends on the underlying design quality of the software systems. In general, software systems that are not well-designed require much more time and effort to make changes, and vice versa. Nowadays, there exist several techniques and tools that analyze software systems and detect opportunities for improving their design quality. However, these opportunities are not equally important and beneficial. Performing a manual inspection to assess their impact is very time consuming and overwhelming for software maintainers, especially when their number is large and they resolve different types of design problems. The proposed research aims to transform the improvement of software design quality into a disciplined, systematic, and tool-supported practice by developing a framework for the automatic assessment and prioritization of design improvement opportunities based on their risks and benefits. The results of the proposed research will contribute to the effective reduction of maintenance cost in existing software systems, which in turn will lead to more reliable software with fewer errors, faster release times for new features, lower software/service prices, and better customer satisfaction in general.