Using evolutionary computation to shed light on the effect of scale and complexity on object-orientedsoftware design

Simons, Chris; Smith, Jim

Abstract

Early lifecycle software design is an intensely human
activity in which design scale and complexity can place a
high cognitive load on the software designer. Recently, the use of evolutionary search has been suggested to yield insights in the nature of software engineering problems generally, and so we have applied dynamic evolutionary computation using self-adaptive
mutation to the object-oriented software design search
space. Using three design problem instances of varying scale and complexity, initial investigations of the discrete search landscape reveal a redundancy in genotype-to-phenotype mapping enabling flexible and effective exploration. In further experiments, mutation
probabilities and population diversity are observed to significantly increase in the face of increasing problem scale, but not for increasing complexity (in problems of the same scale). Based on these findings, we conclude that design problem scale rather than complexity has an effect on the software design process, emphasizing the role of decomposition as a design technique.

Citation

Simons, C., & Smith, J. (2014, October). Using evolutionary computation to shed light on the effect of scale and complexity on object-orientedsoftware design. Paper presented at 2014 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, San Diego, CA, USA

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (unpublished)
• Conference Name: 2014 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics
• Start Date: Oct 5, 2014
• End Date: Oct 8, 2014
• Publication Date: Oct 1, 2014
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Pages: 449-454
• Keywords: software design, evolutionary computation
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/811439
• Publisher URL: http://smc2014.org
• Additional Information: Additional Information : © 2014 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.; Title of Conference or Conference Proceedings : 2014 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics