Reducing Software Entropy: Exploiting software metadata to improve the quality of agile software development

The aim of this project is to utilise source code metadata and configuration/deployment information to reduce software entropy. It will focus on tools and techniques to improve code analysis and reverse engineering for developers who use agile development processes. Automated support will allow high-level descriptions to be constantly up to date with the implementation and not generated by hand as a final documentation exercise. Furthermore, by automated checking of code quality as it is being produced, the amount of disorder in a system, its entropy, can be checked much earlier in the process resulting in considerable savings later on. Approach: Leverage source code metadata and component deployment and configuration information. Focus on languages t hat implement metadata, systems implemented to be run in application servers, and Web Services as example cases. Incorporate results in tools that agile developers are now using in practise. Project Results: (R1) New or improved understanding of the in formation necessary to capture the conceptual level of design in the source code. (R2) New or improved understanding of the information necessary to determine the quality attributes of an implemented system. (R3) Improved techniques for capturing this i nformation in specific software development contexts using source code metadata. (R4) Technologies that plug-in to industry standard tool frameworks to realise those techniques in a usable way. (R5) A body of experiences from empirical studies of such technologies in industrial settings. (R6) Academic publications, industry publications and general presentation materials of the above results.