A software defect report and tracking system in an intranet

Describes a case study where SofTrack (a software defect reporting and tracking system) was implemented using Internet technology in a geographically distributed organization. Four medium- to large-sized information systems with different levels of maturity are being analysed within the scope of this project. They belong to the Portuguese Navy's Information Systems Infrastructure and were developed using a typical legacy systems technology: COBOL with embedded SQL for queries in a relational database environment. This empirical software engineering pilot project has allowed the development of several techniques to help software managers to better understand, control and ultimately improve the software process. Among them are: the introduction of automatic system documentation, module complexity assessment, and effort estimation for software maintenance activities in the organization.