Monitoring Evolution of Code Complexity in Agile/Lean Software Development - A Case Study at Two Companies

Paper in proceeding, 2013

One of the distinguishing characteristics of Agile and Lean software development is that software products “grow” with new functionality with relatively small increments. Continuous customer demands of new features and the companies’ abilities to deliver on those demands are the two driving forces behind this kind of software evolution. Despite the numerous benefits there are a number of risks associated with this kind of growth. One of the main risks is the fact that the complexity of the software product grows slowly, but over time reaches scales which makes the product hard to maintain or evolve. The goal of this paper is to present a measurement system for monitoring the growth of complexity and drawing attention when it becomes problematic. The measurement system was developed during a case study at Ericsson and Volvo Group Truck Technology. During the case study we explored the evolution of size, complexity, revisions and number of designers of two large software products from the telecom and automotive domains. The results show that two measures needed to be monitored to keep the complexity development under control - McCabe’s complexity and number of revisions.