Refactoring Economics

TitleRefactoring Economics
Publication TypePoster
AuthorsSoetens, QD
Place PublishedMoVES yearly event 2009
Year of Publication2009
Publication Languageeng
Abstract

We will study the economical aspect of refactoring by investigating what effect refactoring has on the costs of adding new functionality to a system and by looking at the costs of the refactoring activity itself. We expect that the costs of adding functionalities will be lower after the system was refactored. Indeed it is generally accepted that refactoring has a positive influence on the maintainability of a system. However this is purely based on anecdotal evidence and still needs to be reinforced by a thorough scientific and systematic investigation. In our research we will be conducting a series of case studies on some "real-life" systems. On these cases we will determine where and when they were refactored and what influence these refactorings had on the development costs of the systems.