Ryo Ishizuka, Naohiko Tsuda, Hironori Washizaki, Yoshiaki Fukazawa, Shunsuke Sugimura and Yuichiro Yasuda, “Characteristics of source code degrading quality in software development by multiple organizations,” 3rd IEEE/ACIS International Conference on Big Data, Cloud Computing, and Data Science Engineering (BCD 2018), July 10 – 12, 2018, Yonago, Japan

In software developments, the development organization may change due to various reasons such as cost reduction and retiring developers. The quality of software developed by multiple organizations is generally low, leading to problems such as difficulty in the evolving source code. Here, we show the characteristics of the source code prone to defects and the difference in editing tendencies of source codes among development organizations. We investigated the changes in the relationship of software metrics and the number of defects. Then we compared the results and editing tendencies for refactoring and evolving software in OpenOffice.org, which is developed by multiple companies, and a tool developed by outsourcing. Defects tend to concentrate on files that depend on many other files. Additionally, the code review confirms that refactoring before and after the development organization changes is important for future developments.