Software Evolution

Definitions

The Research Institute in Software Evolution defines software evolution as:

• the set of activities, both technical and managerial, that ensures that software continues to meet organisational and business objectives in a cost effective way.

Manny Lehman and Juan Ramil (2000) defined software evolution as:

• All programming activity that is intended to generate a new software version from an earlier operational version

Ned Chapin (1999) defines software evolution as:

• The application of SoftwareMaintenance activities and processes that generate a new operational software version with a changed customer-experienced functionality or properties from a prior operational version (…) together with the associated quality assurance activities and processes, and with the management of the activities and processes

According to the software life-cycle in the Software Maintenance And Evolution Roadmap, SoftwareEvolution is a particular phase in the SoftwareMaintenance process, immediately after initial delivery, but before servicing, phase out and close down.

Mailing list

There is a public mailing list about software evolution (evolution@joint.org) to which you can subscribe via https://mailbox.informatik.uni-bonn.de/mailman/listinfo.cgi/evolution.

This mailing list is used to inform interested people about activities (such as workshops and conferences) within the software evolution research community, as well as to discuss about evolution-related topics.

Related topics of interest

• An overview of courses on software evolution
• Software Maintenance
• Software Refactoring
• Software Process
• Software Testing

Research

Projects and Networks

• ERCIM Working Group on Software Evolution
• ESF Network "REsearch Links to Explore and Advance Software Evolution" (RELEASE)
• FWO Network "Formal Foundations of Sotware Evolution" (FWO-EVOL)
• The MoraleProject
• The Arriba project: Architectural Resources for the Restructuring and Integration of Business Applications

Research Groups

• The Software Engineering Lab at the University of Mons-Hainaut, Belgium
• The Lab On Re-Engineering at the University of Antwerp, Belgium
• The Research Institute In Software Evolution
• The UCSD Software Evolution Group
• Software Renovation at CWI
• Software Evolution Research Laboratory (SWERL), Delft University of Technology
• Département d'Ingénierie Informatique (INGI) at Université catholique de Louvain (UCL)

Events

Conferences

• International Conference on Software Maintenance (ICSM)
• European Conference on Software Maintenance and Reengineering (CSMR)

Workshops and Symposia

• Belgian Symposium on Software Restructuring (January 2005)
• Workshop on Empirical Studies in Software Maintenance (WESS)
• Workshop on Website Evolution (WSE)
• International Workshop on the Principles of Software Evolution (IWPSE)
• Workshop on Software Evolution Through Transformations
• Workshop on Unanticipated Software Evolution (USE)
• International Workshop on Evolution of Large-scale Industrial Software Applications (ELISA)
• FNRS contact day on Software (re-)engineering (2003)
• Belgisch-Nederlandse Evolutie Workshop (BENEVOL)
• Workshop on Object-Oriented Reengineering (WOOR'03) at ECOOP 2003

Evolution Resources

A wide variety of resourses on software evolution and maintenance resources, including:

• Standards
• Journals
• Books
• Articles
• PhD^? Theses
• Graduation and Master thesisses