Fuzzy ANP Model to Measure the Maintainability of Desktop Software based on Software Development Factors

Objectives: Maintaining a software system is always very challenging, costly and time consuming task. The client or end user may have diverse and frequently changing requirements, so the maximum part of the total software system design and development cost goes into software maintenance to ensure the modification in to delivered system that can meet the changing and growing requirement of end users and clients. It is better to design and develop more maintainable software to meet this objective. Methods: This paper proposed a Fuzzy Rule Based Analytical Network Process (FRBANP) model to calculate the maintaiblity of desktop software on the basis of software development factors, which are necessary to improve maintainability of application software. Fuzzy ANP is used to periortize the software devlopment factors and thses periorties are used to design the fuzzy infrence system to estimate the miantaiablity of a desktop software. Findings: Increased functional requirements lead towards frequent software changes. Software developers must update different system configurations, which may take place through these changes. Proposed method establishes design and development criteria for maintainable software application development and estimate the maintainability on the basis of software devlopment fcator. Applications: The developers can stress upon the design and develop factors as per their priorities to develop the maintainable application software. Consideration and estimation of maintainability during SDLC may increase the system availability and can decrease overall development and operating costs.