Assessment of maintainability in object-oriented software

In software industrial practice, the high cost of the maintenance process for large-scale software has placed emphasis on the need to manage the maintainability in earlier phases of the software life-cycle. This paper discusses the applicability of architectural complexity measures to managing the complexity in the software maintenance phase and the reliability of the maintenance process. It also discusses the theoretical validity of the architectural complexity measures, as has been established using PVS, a formal verification system.