A Realistic Empirical Evaluation of the Costs and Benefits of UML in Software Maintenance

The Unified Modeling Language (UML) is the de facto standard for object-oriented software analysis and design modeling. However, few empirical studies exist that investigate the costs and evaluate the benefits of using UML in realistic contexts. Such studies are needed so that the software industry...

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Veröffentlicht in:IEEE transactions on software engineering Jg. 34; H. 3; S. 407 - 432
Hauptverfasser: Dzidek, W.J., Arisholm, E., Briand, L.C.
Format: Journal Article
Sprache:Englisch
Veröffentlicht: New York IEEE 01.05.2008
IEEE Computer Society
Schlagworte:
and Enhancement
Computer industry
Computer programs
Control systems
Costs
Design
Design engineering
Design notations and documentation
Digital Object Identifier
Distribution
Documentation
Electrical equipment industry
Empirical analysis
Experiments
Laboratories
Maintainability
Maintenance
Object oriented modeling
Object oriented programming
Software
Software design
Software development
Software Engineering
Software maintenance
Software standards
Software/Software Engi
Studies
Unified Modeling Language
Software Engineering
Distribution
and Enhancement
Design notations and documentation
Software/Software Engi
Maintainability
Maintenance
Object-Oriented Programming
ISSN:0098-5589, 1939-3520
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Zusammenfassung:The Unified Modeling Language (UML) is the de facto standard for object-oriented software analysis and design modeling. However, few empirical studies exist that investigate the costs and evaluate the benefits of using UML in realistic contexts. Such studies are needed so that the software industry can make informed decisions regarding the extent to which they should adopt UML in their development practices. This is the first controlled experiment that investigates the costs of maintaining and the benefits of using UML documentation during the maintenance and evolution of a real, non-trivial system, using professional developers as subjects, working with a state-of-the-art UML tool during an extended period of time. The subjects in the control group had no UML documentation. In this experiment, the subjects in the UML group had on average a practically and statistically significant 54% increase in the functional correctness of changes (p=0.03), and an insignificant 7% overall improvement in design quality (p=0.22) - though a much larger improvement was observed on the first change task (56%) - at the expense of an insignificant 14% increase in development time caused by the overhead of updating the UML documentation (p=0.35).
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ISSN:0098-5589
1939-3520
DOI:10.1109/TSE.2008.15