A Proposed Architecture for Quality based Decision Making Approach for Software Re-engineering

Software re-engineering is the modification of a software system after it has been reverse engineered, typically to add new functionality or fix errors. Software re-engineering involves a set of activities aimed at reorganizing a legacy system into a new target system that conforms to quality constraints. This paper explores the reasons behind the failure of software re-engineering. This study has analyzed that some of the most common factors for failure of software re-engineering are misestimated costs and quality inefficiencies. As far as the quality factor is concerned, first the basic tool architecture is analyzed which is used by most of the tools for reverse engineering, reorganization and re-engineering. In this research study, a quality evaluation factor as well as parameters for quality evaluation are added to that particular architecture, so that customers and maintainers can analyze whether they achieve the desired goals for re-engineering. Ifthe target is achieved then the finished product is obtained again with quality and within budget, otherwise more attention should be given to the quality evaluation process.