Q-Analytics™ web analytics: the view shows visit sequences of pages.
Quick Votes™ chart of a distribution of positive and negative user feedback.
First Contact Analysis™
First Contact Analysis™ is an assessment method for software systems. It is based on a number of analyses successfully applied to numerous and various types of systems. It gives a graphical overview of a system’s architecture and structure, design, and complexity and uncovers potential quality issues in the software system.
First Contact Analysis™ uncovers quality issues of the software system under investigation. This is the second level of quality awareness we support with our services. Here we describe both the [ approach ] of First Contact Analysis™ and a couple of [ examples ].
Approach
First Contact Analysis™ is an assessment method for software systems. It is based on a number of automated analyses. They give a graphical overview of the systems:
- Architecture and structure,
- Design, and
- Complexity.
Such an overview is a valuable documentation of the system allowing to teams members a better communication on system matters. New team members experience a lower learning curve when trying to comprehend an unknown system.
Since all analyses are objective and their results clearly separated from our conclusion, both project managers and developers might experience insights on actual system properties and their divergence from expected and intended system properties.
In addition to the system overview, First Contact Analysis™ pinpoints parts of the system that might be critical in further maintenance of the system. We recommend reviewing and refactoring specifically these system parts if necessary.
First Contact Analysis™ is based on our Quality Monitor™ web service. It implements state-of-the-art structural program analyses, checkers for best practice designs (design patterns), and metrics calculations. Results are presented on various levels of abstraction with software visualizations and statistics charts. The Quality Monitor™ supports both the identification of weak points or design flaws in software systems and a better understanding of the analyzed system.
An appropriate architecture and good design cannot be formalized and correctly measured. However, research in the field of software architecture and design propose a number of heuristics. Our partner, the Software Technology Group at Linnaeus University headed by Prof. Welf Löwe, develops such heuristics. These are direct inputs to the First Contact Analysis™. Additionally, First Contact Analysis™ is strongly influenced by heuristics defined by other leading edge research groups in Europe. Especially, the research group at the Research Center Computer Science in Karlsruhe, Germany, who are pioneers in the field of automatic design support, contributed with many worthwhile heuristics. Moreover, all heuristics applied are confirmed in numerous practical field studies.
Heuristics embody knowledge about good design, which has been proven to be valid in numerous industrial cases studies. However, finally, only system architects, designers, and developers knowing the system are able to properly interpret the analysis results and identify false alarms. Hence, First Contact Analysis™ is only an initial step that needs to be followed-up by discussions among the people responsible for the system. The software visualizations and statistics charts that the First Contact Analysis™ provides are have proved an excellent basis therefore.
Examples
We applied the First Contact Analysis™ on our own systems VizzAnalyzer and Grail (both part of the Quality Monitor™ analysis engine). Here we make available reports summarizing the results of the analyses. They may serve as examples showing the kind of insights an First Contact Analysis™ might provide on your systems.
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Report of results of First Contact Analysis™ applied on the VizzAnalyzer™ framework. |
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Report of results of First Contact Analysis™ applied on the graph library Grail. |
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