Summary

Summary of the "Serious" project:

Summary

Software intensive systems evolve during their lifetime. During the creation phase the overall quality will reach a predefined level. After that the software needs to be extended or adapted. Within that period the software quality will degrade if no special measures are taken. To overcome this quality degradation, an organization must regularly plan to prolong the lifetime of the product. However a more mature approach could pay attention to all quality aspects during the complete lifecycle of the product. This approach, focused on retaining the software investment, is called evolutionary software development. Within the SERIOUS project, these software-evolution related issues are addressed as they were, and still are, relatively unexplored territories in software engineering. The application of evolutionary software development techniques, tools and processes in the SERIOUS project resulted in reduced total development costs and increased product lifetimes.

 The Serious Project

The SERIOUS project aimed at the break-through of turning the current practice of handcrafted evolution to methodologically sound techniques supported by industry adoptable tools including corresponding development processes for the evolution of operational software-intensive systems. In the SERIOUS project the software evolution related issues were addressed which is a currently hardly explored territory in software engineering.

The approach was to investigate the technology required, address the process issues and measure the quality of the system.

 Techniques, tools and models to improve quality aspects related to software evolution. SERIOUS aimed to improve techniques to smoothly integrate software refactoring and software  analysis techniques internalize within the day-to-day software process, leading to a true evolutionary software engineering paradigm.

 Processes and methods to improve the software development models in industry. The focus in most software development models is on the creation phase. Requirements for managing the period after delivery is often not taken into account in the creation phase. SERIOUS aimed to address processes and methods, applicable in industry, which explicitly take into account such evolutionary requirements.

 Identification, definition and embedding of software evolution related quality aspects. The SERIOUS project aimed to define various quality aspects in a level of detail that it can be applied and/or used in the early phases of software development and continued to be useable in the evolution phase.

 SERIOUS has applied academic techniques, tools and models related to software evolution. These tools have been applied in a series of industrial case studies to evaluate their usefulness. The results of these studies have been gathered in a handbook on refactoring which is now publicly available.

 Furthermore, process and methods that improve the software development models in industry have been gathered and applied at industrial partners that deal with evolutionary development. This collection of best practices has also been gathered in a process patterns handbook which is now publicly available as well.

 Finally, the quality aspects of software have been studied, and the results of that study have been embedded in tools which now allow partners to monitor the internal quality aspects of their systems in real time.

 comment to: Project Office  .
last updated 04-12-2008


   copyright © Serious