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Pragmatic Software Maintainability Management Using a Multi-agent System Working in Collaboration with the Development Team

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Distributed Computing and Artificial Intelligence, Special Sessions, 17th International Conference (DCAI 2020)

Abstract

This paper introduces an ongoing PhD work that focuses on the design of a multi-agent system that would assess software maintainability in collaboration with human developers. Evaluation of the maintainability is difficult to implement on actual industrial projects as specific criteria cannot be easily adapted to the context of a project, and metrics are not always relevant to the architectural pattern in use. The metrics can be bypassed without improving the quality of the source code. We have the ambition to tackle this problem through a more modular, flexible and dynamic assessment system that will ultimately evolve through a dialogic interaction with the development team. Our approach will first lay the foundations of a shared vocabulary between the artificial agents and the human team. We will further develop a multi-agent system first by introducing feedback from the human team and second by moving towards a real dialogic interaction.

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Correspondence to Sébastien Bertrand , Pierre-Alexandre Favier or Jean-Marc André .

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Bertrand, S., Favier, PA., André, JM. (2021). Pragmatic Software Maintainability Management Using a Multi-agent System Working in Collaboration with the Development Team. In: Rodríguez González, S., et al. Distributed Computing and Artificial Intelligence, Special Sessions, 17th International Conference. DCAI 2020. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 1242. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53829-3_21

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