Identifying and quantifying architectural debt and decoupling level: a metric for architectural maintenance complexity

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United States of America Patent

PATENT NO 11422800
SERIAL NO

16063501

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Abstract

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Groups of architecturally connected files may incur and accumulate high maintenance costs as architectural debts. To quantify such debts, architectural debt, which is a term used herein, may be identified, quantified, measured, and modeled. A history coupling probability matrix for this purpose may search for architecture debts through the lens of 4 patterns of prototypical architectural flaws shown to correlate with reduced software quality. Further, a new architecture maintainability metric—Decoupling Level (DL)—measures how well the software can be decoupled into small and independently replaceable modules. The DL metric opens the possibility of quantitatively comparing maintainability between different projects, as well as monitoring architecture decay throughout software evolution. Decoupling Level may be the only software maintainability metric that bears similarity with other metrics used in everyday life, such as the centimeter, in that it allows managers to monitor, evaluate, and compare software projects and their evolution.

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Patent Owner(s)

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DREXEL UNIVERSITY3141 CHESTNUT STREET PHILADELPHIA PA 19104

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Inventor(s)

Inventor Name Address # of filed Patents Total Citations
Cai, Yuanfang Paoli, US 5 25
Kazman, Frederick Pittsburgh, US 3 6
Mo, Ran Philadelphia, US 7 8
Xiao, Lu Philadelphia, US 58 1336

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