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Volume 16 Supplement 2

Global Software Engineering

EvolTrack: improving design evolution awareness in software development

Journal of the Brazilian Computer Society volume 16, pages 117–131 (2010)Cite this article

Abstract

Software differs from most manufactured products because it is intangible. This characteristic makes it difficult to detect, control, and understand how it evolves. This paper presents an approach based on software visualization that can detect and externalize design evolution made in a software project during its initial development or at any further phase. By using this approach, a developer can be aware of the current state of the software as a whole and can additionally verify if the current design, also called emerging design, is evolving according to the team expectations and leader guidance, preventing problems caused by misunderstandings of the expected software solution. The approach was evaluated with free/open source software (FOSS) projects. The results indicate that the approach behaves as expected when applied to real software development projects, with minor performance bottlenecks.

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Affiliations

  1. COPPE/UFRJ—Systems Engineering and Computer Science Department, Zip 21945-970, P.O. Box 68511, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil

    Rafael da Silva Viterbo de Cepêda, Andréa Magalhães Magdaleno & Cláudia Maria Lima Werner

  2. IC/UFF—Instituto de Computação, Universidade Federal Fluminense, Niterói, RJ, Brazil

    Leonardo Gresta Paulino Murta

Authors
  1. Rafael da Silva Viterbo de Cepêda
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  2. Andréa Magalhães Magdaleno
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  3. Leonardo Gresta Paulino Murta
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  4. Cláudia Maria Lima Werner
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Rafael da Silva Viterbo de Cepêda.

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Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 International License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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de Cepêda, R.d.S.V., Magdaleno, A.M., Murta, L.G.P. et al. EvolTrack: improving design evolution awareness in software development. J Braz Comput Soc 16, 117–131 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13173-010-0011-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13173-010-0011-5

Keywords

  • Software evolution
  • Software visualization
  • Design evolution