Using Static Analysis and Static Measurement for Industrial Software Quality Evaluation

Business organizations that outsource software development need to evaluate the quality of the code delivered by suppliers. In this paper, we illustrate an experience in setting up and using a toolset for evaluating code quality for a company that outsources software development. The selected tools perform static code analysis and static measurement, and provide evidence of possible quality issues. To verify whether the issues reported by tools are associated to real problems, code inspections were carried out. The combination of automated analysis and inspections proved effective, in that several types of defects were identified. Based on our findings, the business company was able to learn what are the most frequent and dangerous types of defects that affect the acquired code: this knowledge is now being used on a regular basis to perform focused verification activities.