Multi-objective optimization framework for software maintenance, component evaluation and selection involving outsourcing, redundancy and customer to customer relationship

Abstract

In this paper, we propose an integrated multi-objective optimization framework for the development and maintenance of a modular software system. From the perspective of development, other than the cost of a software system, the compatibility of the software components, software reliability, delivery time and execution time for the software, we also consider the evaluation of fitness (using TOPSIS) of software components (COTS and in-house) for non-outsourced modules and vendors for outsourced modules on the basis of many important qualitative attributes. On the other hand, from the perspective of maintenance, we consider the software maintenance cost, the evaluation of fitness (using TOPSIS) of maintenance teams (the outsourced teams and the in-house team) on the basis of many important qualitative attributes, and the interactions between maintenance teams, which we call as the customer to customer (C2C) relationship. Moreover, in order to ensure that the software development company may not prefer to interact with a large number of maintenance teams and that a single team is not always burdened with the maintenance of all the modules, we consider some new cardinality and load balancing constraints. The proposed optimization model is tested using a real-world case study involving e-commerce software development.