ISBN 9783843956598

978-3-8439-5659-8, Reihe Informatik

Paula Rachow
Utilizing Architecture Maintainability Smells to Identify and Prioritize Large Refactoring Opportunities

247 Seiten, Dissertation Universität Hamburg (2025), Hardcover, A5

Zusammenfassung / Abstract

In software engineering, maintainability plays a vital role in ensuring the longevity and adaptability of large systems. Despite its importance, practitioners often neglect it due to factors such as tight deadlines, leading to an accumulation of technical debt that hinders system evolution.

Addressing architectural debt requires complex, time-consuming refactorings. The volume of debt makes it impossible to resolve everything, and identifying the most critical areas is challenging. This research facilitates the identification and prioritization of architectural refactoring opportunities using architecture maintainability smells. While these smells offer a clear way to uncover such opportunities, the absence of a universally accepted catalog and definitions limits their practical use. Without shared terminology, collaboration and consensus on priorities become difficult.

This thesis consolidates existing knowledge on architecture maintainability smells into a knowledge base comprising an ontology and taxonomy. We identify 561 smell names from literature, assess their impact on maintainability, and map them to violated design principles. The ontology captures interconnections and violations, while the taxonomy organizes the field into coherent categories, supporting more effective discussions and reducing the risk of overlooking issues. From this, we distill 19 essential smells with defining characteristics, attributes, detection techniques, and refactoring strategies, resolving ambiguities and fostering standardization.

To apply this knowledge, we propose a decision framework for prioritizing refactorings based on each smell’s impact, severity, available resources, and the project’s strategic goals. This systematic approach enables practitioners to target critical refactorings even under tight deadlines.