Evaluation of the usefulness of diagrams of the run-time structure for coding activities

Abstract

Software maintenance accounts for 50% to 90% of the costs over the life-cycle of a software system. And program comprehension is a major activity during software maintenance, absorbing around half of the maintenance costs. To support comprehension, researchers have produced many tools to visualize the structure of the system. The prevalent thinking is that such diagrams help with program comprehension. For example, a high-level view can help a developer locate where to implement a change