Guest editorial: Special section: Software quality and maintainability

Abstract

Software plays a crucial role in modern societies. Not only do people rely on it for their daily operations or business, but also for their lives as well. For this reason, correct and consistent behavior of software systems is a fundamental and critical part of end-user expectations. Additionally, businesses require cost-effective production, maintenance, and operation of their systems. Thus, the demand for high-quality and maintainable software is increasing, setting it as a differentiator for the success or failure of a software product, as well as a dominating factor for the commercial success of companies. The main questions that arise concern how quality is measured and communicated to stakeholders. What, where, and when we assess and assure quality are also open issues. Many views have been expressed about software quality attributes including maintainability, security, evolvability, portability, robustness, reliability, usability, and efficiency. Some of these have been formulated in standards such as ISO/IEC 25010 (SQuaRE) and CMMI. However, the debate about quality and maintainability between software producers, vendors, and users continues, while organizations need the ability to evaluate the software systems they use or develop from multiple viewpoints. So, is ‘‘software quality in the eye of the beholder’’? This special section on Software Quality and Maintainability presents original work and relates experiences on issues pertaining to software quality and maintainability. Moreover, the theme of this special section opens discussion of how to investigate quality issues in the maintenance of software systems. Out of 15 full-paper submissions for this issue, four papers were selected. The accepted papers address a range of topics related to software quality, including code refactoring, API