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INVESTIGATING the ROLE of UML in the SOFTWARE MODELING and MAINTENANCE a Preliminary Industrial Survey

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INVESTIGATING the ROLE of UML in the SOFTWARE MODELING and MAINTENANCE a Preliminary Industrial Survey INVESTIGATING THE ROLE OF UML IN THE SOFTWARE MODELING AND MAINTENANCE A Preliminary Industrial Survey Giuseppe Scanniello Dipartimento di Matematica e Informatica, University of Basilicata, Viale Dell'Ateneo, Macchia Romana, Italy Carmine Gravino, Genny Tortora Dipartimento di Matematica e Informatica, University of Salerno, Via Ponte Don Melillo Fisciano, (SA), Italy Keywords: Software Development, Software Maintenance, UML, Survey. Abstract: In the paper we present the results of an industrial survey conducted with the Italian software companies that employ a relevant part of the graduate students of the University of Basilicata and of the University of Salerno. The survey mainly investigates the state of the practice regarding the use of UML (Unified Modeling Language) in the software development and maintenance The results reveals that the majority of the companies use UML for modeling software systems (in the analysis and design phases) and for performing maintenance operations. Moreover, maintenance operations are mainly performed by low experienced practitioners. 1 INTRODUCTION of Salerno. The companies that host students for external stages have been involved as well. All the In the software engineering community, there is a invited companies (i.e., the target population of the growing interest in the use of empirical studies study) represent our industrial contact network. (Basili, 1993) (Kitchenham et al., 2002) such as The research questions the presented study aims controlled experiments, qualitative studies, surveys, at answering for the selected population are: and archival analyses to investigate processes, [RQ1] What is the relevance of UML? methods, and tools for software development and [RQ2] What is the used development process maintenance. Among these kinds of studies, a survey model? is an investigation performed in retrospect (Wohlin [RQ3] Is UML used in the early phases of the et al., 2000) to gather qualitative and quantitative software development? data very often using questionnaires that are [RQ4] Is UML used to support software engineers in designed through taking a sample which is the execution of maintenance operations? representative of the population to be studied. The [RQ5] Which software models (i.e., analysis and/or survey results can be analyzed to derive descriptive design) are provided to the software and conclusions that are only applicable to the engineers to perform maintenance population where the sample has been taken. operations? In order to investigate the state of the practice [RQ6] Which is the more common kind of software regarding the use of UML (Unified Modeling maintenance operation? Language) in the software development and [RQ7] Which is the mean effort required to perform maintenance we have conducted an explorative maintenance operations? survey (Wohlin et al., 2000) among the Italian software companies that employ the greater part of In order to answer the above research questions the people with a Master’s or a Bachelor’s degree the following subsequent steps have been from either the University of Basilicata or University accomplished: Scanniello G., Gravino C. and Tortora G. (2010). 141 INVESTIGATING THE ROLE OF UML IN THE SOFTWARE MODELING AND MAINTENANCE - A Preliminary Industrial Survey. In Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - Information Systems Analysis and Specification, pages 141-148 DOI: 10.5220/0002870601410148 Copyright c SciTePress ICEIS 2010 - 12th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems 1. design of a questionnaire to investigate the - System Design: a process to define the research questions; architecture, components, modules, interfaces, 2. conduction of the survey, leveraging the relative and data for a software system to satisfy industrial contact network; specified requirements. 3. analysis of the results. - Software Maintenance: the modification of a The design and the results of the survey are software product after delivery to correct faults, present and discuss in this paper. In particular, the to improve performance or other attributes, or to remainder of the paper is organized as follows. adapt the product to a modified environment Section 2 provides the notions and concepts we used (ISO/IEC, 2006) . in the paper and presents the design of the survey as well. Section 3 describes the results achieved, while - Ordinary Maintenance: reactive modifications general findings and threats to validity are reported of a software product performed after delivery in Section 4. Final remarks and future work to keep a software product usable, to improve conclude the paper. performance or maintainability, and to detect and correct latent faults. - Extraordinary Maintenance: modifications of 2 DEFINITION AND DESIGN a software product performed after the delivery phase to correct discovered problems. The survey goals can be summarized as follows: - UML: a formalism to specify, visualize, and - Primary Goal: comprehending the relevance of document models of software systems, UML for our industrial contact network including their structure and design (UML, (employing the greater part of the students from 2009). the Universities of the authors). We identified three areas of interest where we wanted to collect data: - Secondary Goal: identifying the core business activity of the interviewed industries between - Demographic Information: we collected systems design and development and software demographic information about the respondents maintenance. and their organizations. 2.1 Conceptual Model - Relevance and Typology: we collected information about the relevance (i.e., number of The conceptual model clarifies the meaning of some organizations that use UML with respect to the terms and describes all the entities of interest for the complete sample) and quantity (i.e., the conducted survey. number) of projects where UML is used to develop and maintain software products. Great - Project: a completed software development care was taken to collect information about the project. UML notations mainly used in the software development and maintenance. - Development Process Model: a structure Demographic information includes the respondent’s imposed on the development of a software organization. In particular we collected: business product (Pressman, 2005). domain, size of the organization and respondent’s - Software Artefact: a tangible product created group/business unit, typical duration and kind of during the software development process. It can projects, average experience and skill of group be created in the early and final stages of members. In addition, we collected information software development (Pressman, 2005). about the respondents themselves, such as: age, gender, educational qualification, role in the - Requirements Analysis: a subdiscipline of organization (e.g., IT manager, Project manager). systems engineering and software engineering To evaluate the company relevance the that is concerned with determining the goals, respondents were also asked to specify whether their functions, and constraints of hardware and organizations use UML for software development software systems (Ciolkowski et al., 2003, and maintenance. Accordingly, we divided the Laplante, 2009). respondents’ organizations in the following groups, which depend on whether the organizations have: 142 INVESTIGATING THE ROLE OF UML IN THE SOFTWARE MODELING AND MAINTENANCE - A Preliminary Industrial Survey - (Group 1) used UML for modelling software systems. The first part (Section 1), common to all systems in the software development and for paths, was used to get information on both the performing maintenance operations; respondent and his/her company (i.e., demographic - (Group 2) used UML only in the early phases information). The questions of Section 1 were 12, of the software development (i.e., analysis and while Section 2 included 8 questions. Finally, design); Section 3 included 9 questions. The questionnaire - (Group 3) used UML for performing mainly contained closed questions. Only a few maintenance operations; questions required filling in numbers or text. - (Group 4) used UML neither in software development nor maintenance. For the first and second group we asked the Section 1 typical size of a developed software product and the Respondent and adopted development process model. For the second organization data and the third group, questions were also asked on the employees involved in the software development and maintenance, respectively. These questions were Organization activity also asked to the respondents of group 1. For the Only Maintenance organizations of the fourth group the questionnaire Section 2 Development finished after collecting the demographic Development information. Information on the Projects Section 3 2.2 Identification of the Target Other Population of the Sample Maintenance Information on the yes Maintenance as well The target population consisted of decision makers Projects in software developing organizations. Indeed, we no considered ICT organizations that develop, sell, and maintain software as a main part of their business (e.g., software house) or develop software as an integral part of their products or services (e.g., Figure 1: Designed questionnaire. commerce in the healthcare domain). The selection of the organizations (sampling) has The questionnaire was introduced with a brief been conducted using the network contacts of the motivation sketching the general problem of the groups
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