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From: fwb@pollux.tmc.edu (Fred Brehm)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: Modifiability
Message-ID: <62683@siemens.siemens.com>
Date: 6 Jun 91 14:16:53 GMT
References: <2192@Terra.cc.brunel.ac.uk> <1991Jun5.201807.13286@netcom.COM>
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Distribution: comp.software-eng
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>>I would like to initiate a discussion on maintainability! 
>>there are two main positions that people (and literature) take on how to 
>>produce miantainable (and modifiable) software:
>>	- Adopting a software development method and making sure that the
>>	documentation is up to date will insure that the software will
>>	be highly modifiable.
>
>If one adopts a software development method that is worth anything, then
>one should wind up, as a consequence, with software that is maintainable
>and modifiable. Another way to put this is that one of the criteria for
>selecting a software development method is that the method, properly
>applied, should result in software that is maintainable and modifiable.

Don't you think the design of the software (or the whole system, only partly
software) has something to do with it too?

Will "a software development method that is worth anything" be so powerful
that it will provide the crystal ball to predict all future modification
requests?

Perhaps there are some kinds of modifications that will not be possible, or
be extremely hard, for a given system architecture.

Fred
-- 
Frederic W. Brehm	Siemens Corporate Research	Princeton, NJ
fwb@demon.siemens.com	-or-	...!princeton!siemens!demon!fwb