EXPERIMENTAL EVALUATION OF N-MODEL METHODOLOGY

Abstract

Software maintenance is an essential part of the software development life cycle. Usually software engineers use ad hoc approaches to enhance legacy systems in the absence of a systematic methodology. However, there exists a methodology named "N- Model methodology" to enhance object-oriented legacy code. In this thesis, an experimental procedure is designed and applied to the N-Model methodology for enhancement of object-oriented software. A set of four categories of metrics; Process Metrics, Requirement Metrics, Design and Code Metrics and Test Metrics (total of 10 metrics) has been identified and applied. Additionally, a controlled experiment has been designed to compare the performance of the N-Model methodology with that of ad hoc approaches by using two separate legacy code bases. Although the experiment is limited in scope, using this experimental procedure and metrics, it has been validated that the N-model methodology significantly outperforms the ad hoc approaches.