Software Evolution and Maintenance

PREFACE

karmany eva dhikaras te; ma phalesu kadachana; ma karmaphalahetur bhur; ma te sango stv akarmani.

Your right is to work only; but never to the fruits thereof; may you not be motivated by the fruits of actions; nor let your attachment to be towards inaction.

—Bhagavad Gita

We have been witnessing stellar growth of the global software industry for three decades. As this century progresses the industry is engaged in fixing defects and enhancing and adding new features to the existing software applications. In fact, more resources are spent on software maintenance than on actual software development. The imbalance between software development and maintenance is opening up new business opportunities for software off-shoring companies. It is also generating much research interest to develop methods and tools for improving software evolution and maintenance (SEAM).

Twenty-five years ago, the software industry was a much smaller one, and the academia used to offer a single, comprehensive course entitled Software Engineering to educate undergraduate students in the nuts and bolts of software development and maintenance. Although software maintenance has been a part of the classical software engineering literature for decades, the subject has not been widely incorporated into the mainstream undergraduate curriculum. A few universities have started offering an option in software engineering comprising four specialized courses, namely, Requirements Specification, Software Design ...