TY - JOUR
T1 - An economic model to estimate software rewriting and replacement times
AU - Chan, Taizan
AU - Chung, Siu Leung
N1 - Funding Information:
We would like to thank the editor, Prof. Hausi Muller, and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and constructive suggestions on earlier versions of the paper. Taizan Chan gratefully acknowledges partial financial support from the Reginald H. Jones Research Center of the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. This research was partially undertaken whiIe Taizan Chan was a visiting scholar at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Teck Hua Ho undertook this research while he was in Singapore in 1994.
PY - 1996
Y1 - 1996
N2 - The effort required to service maintenance requests on a software system increases as the software system ages and deteriorates. Thus, it may be economical to replace an aged software system with a freshly written one to contain the escalating cost of maintenance. We develop a normative model of software maintenance and replacement effort that enables us to study the optimal policies for software replacement. Based on both analytical and simulation solutions, we determine the timings of software rewriting and replacement, and hence the schedule of rewriting, as well as the size of the rewriting team as functions of the 1 ) user environment, 2) effectiveness of rewriting, 3) technology platform, 4) development quaiity, 5) software familiarity, and 6) maintenance quality of the existing and the new software systems. Among other things, we show that a volatile user environment often leads to a delayed rewriting and an early replacement (i.e., a compressed development schedule). On the other hand, a greater familiarity with either the existing or the new software system allows for a less-compressed development schedule. In addition, we also show that potential savings from rewriting will be higher if the new software system is developed with a superior technology platform, if programmers' familiarity with the new software system is greater, and if the software system is rewritten with a higher initial quality.
AB - The effort required to service maintenance requests on a software system increases as the software system ages and deteriorates. Thus, it may be economical to replace an aged software system with a freshly written one to contain the escalating cost of maintenance. We develop a normative model of software maintenance and replacement effort that enables us to study the optimal policies for software replacement. Based on both analytical and simulation solutions, we determine the timings of software rewriting and replacement, and hence the schedule of rewriting, as well as the size of the rewriting team as functions of the 1 ) user environment, 2) effectiveness of rewriting, 3) technology platform, 4) development quaiity, 5) software familiarity, and 6) maintenance quality of the existing and the new software systems. Among other things, we show that a volatile user environment often leads to a delayed rewriting and an early replacement (i.e., a compressed development schedule). On the other hand, a greater familiarity with either the existing or the new software system allows for a less-compressed development schedule. In addition, we also show that potential savings from rewriting will be higher if the new software system is developed with a superior technology platform, if programmers' familiarity with the new software system is greater, and if the software system is rewritten with a higher initial quality.
KW - Economic modeling
KW - Optimization
KW - Project management
KW - Software maintenanceysoftware replacement
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=0346254047&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/32.536958
DO - 10.1109/32.536958
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:0346254047
SN - 0098-5589
VL - 22
SP - 580
EP - 598
JO - IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering
JF - IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering
IS - 8
ER -