A case study on the impact of refactoring on quality and productivity in an agile team

Raimund Moser; Pekka Abrahamsson; Witold Pedrycz; Alberto Sillitti; Giancarlo Succi

doi:10.1007/978-3-540-85279-7_20

A case study on the impact of refactoring on quality and productivity in an agile team

Raimund Moser
, Pekka Abrahamsson
, Witold Pedrycz
, Alberto Sillitti
, Giancarlo Succi

VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland

VTT (former employee or external)
Free University of Bozen-Bolzano
University of Alberta

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference article in proceedings › Scientific › peer-review

105 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Refactoring is a hot and controversial issue. Supporters claim that it helps increasing the quality of the code, making it easier to understand, modify and maintain. Moreover, there are also claims that refactoring yields higher development productivity – however, there is only limited empirical evidence of such assumption. A case study has been conducted to assess the impact of refactoring in a close-to industrial environment. Results indicate that refactoring not only increases aspects of software quality, but also improves productivity. Our findings are applicable to small teams working in similar, highly volatile domains (ours is application development for mobile devices). However, additional research is needed to ensure that this is indeed true and to generalize it to other contexts.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	Balancing Agility and Formalism in Software Engineering
Editors	Bertrand Meyer, Jerzy R. Nawrocki, Bartosz Walter
Place of Publication	Berlin
Publisher	Springer
Pages	252-266
ISBN (Electronic)	978-3-540-85279-7
ISBN (Print)	978-3-540-85278-0
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-85279-7_20
Publication status	Published - 2008
MoE publication type	A4 Article in a conference publication
Event	Second IFIP TC 2 Central and East European Conference on Software Engineering Techniques, CEE-SET 2007 - Poznan, Poland Duration: 10 Oct 2007 → 12 Oct 2007

Publication series

Series	Lecture Notes in Computer Science
Volume	5082
ISSN	0302-9743

Conference

Conference	Second IFIP TC 2 Central and East European Conference on Software Engineering Techniques, CEE-SET 2007
Country/Territory	Poland
City	Poznan
Period	10/10/07 → 12/10/07

Keywords

Refactoring
software process
methodologies
software metrics

Access to Document

10.1007/978-3-540-85279-7_20

Cite this

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title = "A case study on the impact of refactoring on quality and productivity in an agile team",

abstract = "Refactoring is a hot and controversial issue. Supporters claim that it helps increasing the quality of the code, making it easier to understand, modify and maintain. Moreover, there are also claims that refactoring yields higher development productivity – however, there is only limited empirical evidence of such assumption. A case study has been conducted to assess the impact of refactoring in a close-to industrial environment. Results indicate that refactoring not only increases aspects of software quality, but also improves productivity. Our findings are applicable to small teams working in similar, highly volatile domains (ours is application development for mobile devices). However, additional research is needed to ensure that this is indeed true and to generalize it to other contexts.",

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Moser, R, Abrahamsson, P, Pedrycz, W, Sillitti, A & Succi, G 2008, A case study on the impact of refactoring on quality and productivity in an agile team. in B Meyer, JR Nawrocki & B Walter (eds), Balancing Agility and Formalism in Software Engineering. Springer, Berlin, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 5082, pp. 252-266, Second IFIP TC 2 Central and East European Conference on Software Engineering Techniques, CEE-SET 2007, Poznan, Poland, 10/10/07. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-85279-7_20

A case study on the impact of refactoring on quality and productivity in an agile team. / Moser, Raimund; Abrahamsson, Pekka; Pedrycz, Witold et al.
Balancing Agility and Formalism in Software Engineering. ed. / Bertrand Meyer; Jerzy R. Nawrocki; Bartosz Walter. Berlin: Springer, 2008. p. 252-266 (Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 5082).

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference article in proceedings › Scientific › peer-review

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AU - Succi, Giancarlo

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AB - Refactoring is a hot and controversial issue. Supporters claim that it helps increasing the quality of the code, making it easier to understand, modify and maintain. Moreover, there are also claims that refactoring yields higher development productivity – however, there is only limited empirical evidence of such assumption. A case study has been conducted to assess the impact of refactoring in a close-to industrial environment. Results indicate that refactoring not only increases aspects of software quality, but also improves productivity. Our findings are applicable to small teams working in similar, highly volatile domains (ours is application development for mobile devices). However, additional research is needed to ensure that this is indeed true and to generalize it to other contexts.

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KW - methodologies

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A case study on the impact of refactoring on quality and productivity in an agile team

Abstract

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Conference

Keywords

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Cite this