Improving software maintenance efficiency with behavior-based cognitive models

Currently, in most software maintenance environments, the fundamental tool used by software maintainers to perform system maintenance is the integrated development environment (IDE). Current IDEs have inadequate usability and offer little design information to the user, which may impair program comprehension activities required for efficient maintenance. We have developed and tested a prototype IDE that provides behavioral design information in graphical form, with the intent of allowing software maintainers the ability to more easily learn how a system works and locate relevant source code without the need to consult outside documentation. We show that in two experimental maintenance tasks, users were able to find and modify appropriate code more quickly when using an IDE based on a behavioral view of the software compared with a more traditional, structurally-oriented IDE. Moreover, when using an IDE with a behavioral view, users noticed software patterns more readily and more often used a top-down strategy for solving the maintenance tasks.