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  • SIG Report: Trend Report on IPv4 Captivity 2011
    We have performed a light-weight source code scan on 145 recently developed software systems to determine whether they contain hard-coded dependencies on version 4 of the Internet Protocol (IPv4). We compared our results with a similar scan that we performed in 2010.

  • Issue Handling Performance in Proprietary Software Projects
    This paper reports our investigation on the relation between software maintainability and the speed of fixing defects in three proprietary software projects. This work is a replication of an earlier study performed by SIG in open source systems; Assessment of Issue Handling Efficiency (PDF).

  • What Is the Value of Your Software?
    Current method in determining the value of software is based on the total cost spent in software development. This method suffers from over valuation of software because development inefficiencies and product imperfections are taken into account. This paper proposes new methods based on the notion of Technical Debt to determine the value of software more objectively.

  • Detection of Seed Methods for Quantification of Feature Confinement
    Andrzej Olszak, a researcher from the University of Southern Denmark has visited SIG in May-July 2011. Together with researchers of SIG a heuristic for automatically detecting so-called 'seed-methods' in software systems was developed during his visit. These methods can be used to quantify the scattering of concerns within a software system, a measurement which is related to the amount of effort needed to adjust particular concerns within a system. Using this heuristic it becomes possible to define an automated and repeatable process for quantifying the scattering of concerns within a software system, a process which normally involves human intervention.

  • Extracting Dynamic Dependencies between Web Services Using Vector Clocks
    Researcher from Delft Technical University have, in cooperation with the Software Improvement Group, proposed a method to extract dynamic dependencies between web-services using the concept of vector clocks. This paper explains how vector clocks can be applied to this problem and discusses the impact of applying the method inside an existing environment. This research is part of the Re-engineering Service-Oriented Systems project, a collaboration project between Delft Technical University, the Software Improvement Group and KPMG CT Information Technology.

  • Categories of Source Code in Industrial Systems
    In this joint publication of SIG and Universidade do Minho, the analyzes of 80 industrial OO systems provided evidence of a total of six different 6 source code categories. These categories are used by SIG to differentiate code to be analyzed and how measurements are presented to clients.

  • Benchmark-based Aggregation of Metrics to Ratings
    In this joint publication of SIG and Universidade do Minho, the SIG method for calibrating star rating thresholds is explained in full detail. This methodology, together with the methodology to derive metric thresholds is applied annually to update the SIG quality model against the industry reference data in the SIG benchmark repository.

  • Dependency Profiles for Software Architecture Evaluations
    In cooperation with Delft Technical University, the Software Improvement Group has defined a new system level metric metric called a `dependency profile'. The goal of the profile is to quantify the level of encapsulation within a software system. In this paper the definition of the profile is given and an exploratory study of the applicability of the metric is conducted. In addition, we also provide an outline of the experiment we are executing to validate the indicative powers of the profile.

  • SIG Report: Mining the Dutch National ICT Dashboard
    September 7, 2011
    Last May, the Dutch National Government launched the National ICT Dashboard. The dashboard received quite a bit of criticism, because it employs a three-color scoring system that shows all projects to be "green". While common wisdom and numerous press reports suggest that many of these projects are failing. To put the public debate on objective ground, SIG dug into the underlying data of the dashboard.

  • Measuring Maintainability of Spreadsheets in the Wild
    Several studies have shown how spreadsheets are pervasive in many organizations as a form of end-user programming. Despite their importance and long lifespan, they are seldom developed with maintenance concerns in mind, and organizations have no efficient way of estimating the risk they present. In this paper we take a first step towards automated assessment of spreadsheet maintainability.

  • A Comparative Study of Code Query Technologies
    In this comparative study by the Software Improvement Group, the Universidade do Minho, and Utrecht University seven technologies for querying program code were evaluated against 12 criteria.

  • Requirements for Automated Assessment of Spreadsheet Maintainability
    In this position paper we argue for the need to create a model to estimate the maintainability of a spreadsheet based on (automated) measurement. We propose to do so by applying a structured methodology that has already shown its value in the estimation of maintainability of software products. We also argue for the creation of a curated, community-contributed repository of spreadsheets.

  • A Controlled Experiment for Program Comprehension through Trace Visualization
    This paper reports on the first controlled experiment to quantitatively measure the added value of trace visualization for program comprehension. SIG's consultant, Bas Cornelissen, conducted this research in collaboration with researchers of the Delft University of Technology.

  • Faster Issue Resolution With Higher Technical Quality of Software
    We expanded an earlier study into the relationship between issue resolution speed and source code quality to a larger sample of software systems and more types of issues. We found that both corrective and non-corrective maintenance are performed faster on source code of higher quality.

  • Preparing for a Literature Survey of Software Architecture using Formal Concept Analysis
    Researchers from SIG and the Universidade do Minho (Braga, Portugal) have proposed a pragmatic method to perform preliminary literature studies that helps in getting aquatinted with unknown fileds of science. The method uses Formal Concept Analysis to produce visual representations of the papers, their attributes and their relationships. It has different applications, such as preparing for literature surveys or related work analysis. This paper presents the method, explores its application to preparing for a literature survey on Software Architecture and discusses its benefits as well as its shortcomings.

  • An Empirical Model of Technical Debt and Interest
    This paper proposes an empirical model to estimate technical debts and the corresponding interests in software systems based on SIG's quality model. 

  • Quantifying the Analyzability of Software Architectures
    Together with Delft Technical University, the Software Improvement Group has performed an empirical study to investigate how the analyzability of implemented software architectures can be quantified. The result of this study is a new metric called 'Component Balance'. Additionally, the study illustrates the usefulness of this metric in different evaluation scenarios and validates the values of the metric against the opinion of experts.

  • SIG Report: Dependence on Internet Protocol Version 4 in application software source code
    We have performed a light-weight source code scan on 132 recently developed software systems to determine whether they contain hard-coded dependencies on version 4 of the Internet Protocol (IPv4).

  • A Lightweight Sanity Check for Implemented Architectures
    This joint study of the TU Delft and SIG introduces the lightweight sanity check for implemented architectures (LiSCIA) evaluation method. LiSCIA can be used out of the box to perform a first architectural evaluation of a system. The check is based on years of experience in evaluating the maintainability of software systems.

  • Assessment of Product Maintainability for Two Space Domain Simulators
    The SIG quality model is applied to two simulators systems used in the space domain revealing that strict software processes are not enough to prevent product maintainability issues.

  • Deriving Metric Thresholds from Benchmark Data
    In this joint publication of SIG, University of Utrecht, and Universidade do Minho, the SIG method for calibration of metric thresholds in quality models is explained in full detail. This calibration method is applied annually to update the SIG quality model against the industry reference data in the SIG benchmark repository.

  • SIG Report: OSS Industry Savings
    April 2010
    This report investigates the use of open source software libraries in proprietary software developments. The results show that open source libraries are widely used in a set of over 300 proprietary systems, and their usage has introduced estimated savings in excess of 1 million EUR per system.

  • A Cognitive Model for Software Architecture Complexity

    This joint publication of TU Delft, C1 WPS and SIG provides an overview of a model for software architecture complexity based on theories from cognitive science. The model can be used as a quality model in existing architecture evaluation methods or as a formal justification to evaluate specific attributes of an implemented architecture.


  • Assessment of Issue Handling Efficiency

    A joint study of the TU Delft and SIG meets the MSR Challenge of discovering interesting facts in historical software repositories. This case study shows that a number of straightforward instruments for visualisation and quantification can be used in concert to assess the efficiency of issue handling both at a high abstraction level and in detail.


  • Requirements for Technical Quality of Software Products

    In this joint case study, the Universidade do Minho (Portugal) and SIG analysed the Satellite Simulator (SimSat) of the European Space Agency (ESA).


  • Standardized Code Quality Benchmarking for Improving Software Maintainability

    A joint publication by TÜV Informationstechnik (TÜViT) and SIG at the International Workshop on Software Quality and Maintainability (SQM 2010). This article provides an overview of the standardized methodology for source code evaluation that was developed by SIG and forms the basis of the software product certification service offered by TÜViT.


  • Faster Defect Resolution with Higher Technical Quality of Software
    A study carried out by TU Delft in cooperation with SIG has shown that bug fixing activities take less time for software products with a higher rating according to the SIG Quality Model.

  • SIG Report: Risks in the adoption of OpenOffice.org by governmental institutions
    January 2010
    SIG analyzed three versions of OpenOffice.org. The source code was measured and rated against the SIG Quality Model. Source code measurements show that although OpenOffice.org is over 4 million lines of code, it is still eligible for the SIG/TÜViT certification scheme. Furthermore, we identified risks that governmental institutions might be incurring when adopting OpenOffice.org due to the recent acquisition of Sun Microsystems by Oracle.

  • Static Estimation of Test Coverage
    In this joint study of the Universidade do Minho (Portugal) and SIG a novel technique is introduced for estimating test coverage using static analysis only, i.e. without the need to execute the tests.

  • Criteria for the Evaluation of Implemented Architectures
    This joint study of the TU Delft and SIG reports on a concrete list of 15 system attributes which influence the maintainability of an implemented architecture. The list is the result of an empirical study involving over 40 Software Risk Assessment reports, and is used as a starting point to develop a light-weight software architecture evaluation method.

  • An Integrated Formal Methods Tool-Chain and its Application to Verifying a File System Model
    A joint study of the Universidade do Minho (Portugal) and SIG investigated innovative ways of integrating languages and tools for software modeling, testing and verification. This paper presents a tool-chain which integrates design and reasoning tools to yield correct software models.

  • A Survey-based Study of the Mapping of System Properties to ISO/IEC 9126 Maintainability Characteristics
    SIG uses a quality model for aggregation of source code measurements. This paper reports on an experiment to validate the aggregation and study possibilities for its refinement.

  • Constraint-aware Schema Transformation
    A joint study of University of Minho and SIG describes a methodology and a tool to transform schemas (of databases or xml files) preserving the defined constraints and doing automatic data migration. We apply this transformation to migrate a formal specification of data-types to a relational database.

  • Benchmarking Technical Quality of Software Products
    This paper describes SIG's approach to collecting measurement results into a central benchmark repository. Some open-source software products are used to exemplify how comparisons regarding technical quality can be performed.

  • A Case Study in Grammar Engineering
    A joint study of University of Minho and SIG describes the application of well-established software engineering techniques to the development of a grammar. This study shows that grammars like any other software artifact, require the use of testing and coverage analysis, and quality monitoring.

  • Evaluation of Code Query Technologies for Industrial Use
    A joint study of University of Minho, University of Utrecht and SIG describes the comparison of three code query technologies Crocopat, Rscript, and SemmleCode focusing on their use in industry. Although all technologies implement important features, we recognize the need for another solution combining the best features of all technologies.

  • Monitoring the Quality of Outsourced Software
    In this publication, the Software Monitoring approach of SIG was introduced and illustrated with case reports involving outsourced software development.

  • Quality Assessment for Embedded SQL
    In this joint publication with Utrecht University, a technique is presented for extracting SQL queries from program text, followed by metrics-based quality assessment.

  • Source-Based Software Risk Assessment
    In this joint publication with Delft University of Technology and CWI, the SIG method for performing software risk assessments is explained. A fundamental feature of the method is its factual basis on source code measurements.