Software Re-engineering

Software Re-engineering

1. Process of software development which is done to improve the maintainability of a software system.

2. Processes

   • Inventory analysis : sorting active software applications by business criticality, longevity, current maintainability, and other local criteria
   • Document restructuring : update poor documents if they are used and fully rewrite the documentation for critical systems focusing on the "essential minimum"
   • Reverse engineering : process of design recovery and analyzing a program in an effort to create a representation of the program at some abstraction level higher than source code
   • Code restructuring : source code is analyzed and violations of structured programming practices are noted and repaired
   • Forward engineering : recovers design information from existing source code and uses this design information to reconstitute the existing system to improve its overall quality or performance
   • Data restructuring : current data architecture is dissected, data models are defined and existing data structures are reviewed for quality

3. Advantages

   • Reduced risk: As the software is already existing, the risk is less as compared to developing a new software.
   • Reduced cost: the cost of re-engineering is significantly less than the costs of developing a new software.