Towards Group Decision Support in the Software Maintenance Process

Software maintenance is an element-key of the life cycle of software. However,the techniques of software maintenance do not consider the diversity and the complexity of decisions which do not stop increasing. So, there are at present a few tools, susceptible to insure the relevance and the efficiency of the decision-making in this phase. The work presented in this paper aims to eliminate or at least to reduce the effect to fall in an expensive change by reducing the time to find a compromise on the adequate change. The development of the decision support system for software maintenance is an answer to the problem. The developed tool allows:-to make a fast diagnosis on the software by using the coupling metrics;-to help the decision-makers of the maintenance, according to their preferences often conflicting, to adopt a change among several proposed. To answer this group decision where various points of view are considered, we propose a negotiation protocol. This protocol try to find a compromise that suits best all the decision-makers.