On the Use of Productivity Aids in System Development and Maintenance.

摘要

There exists a substantial literature on productivity aids. Software aids have been developed in areas such as testing, documentation, programming, design, and analysis. A survey of almost five hundred organizations was performed to analyze various aspects of software maintenance. A purpose of the survey was to analyze the use of various productivity aids, and to ascertain relationships between their use and maintenance effort and characteristics. The survey indicates that no productivity aid was widely employed in system development and that many productivity aids do not address perceived problem areas. Areas perceived as problems include user involvement in the application, handling user enhancements, and management concerns with resource allocation. Statistical analysis found certain tools (HIPO), automated flowcharting, data base dictionaries, and test data generators) more prevalent among organizations with larger data processing budgets. Use of HIPO (automated flowcharts) was found to be more prevalent among younger (older) applications. Data base dictionaries and test data generators were found to associate with larger systems. Analysis revealed that the impact of the use of tools on maintenance effort is dominated by characteristics of size, number of reports, system development experience, and use of data base management systems. (Author)