The facts:
- Nearly one-third of all software projects are cancelled.
- Two-thirds of all projects encounter cost overruns of more than 200%, and over 80% of all projects are deemed failures.
- The cost of maintenance amounts to at least 50% of the overall cost of object-oriented programs.
The main reasons behind these gloom statements is that programs too often have poor quality characteristics and, in particular, a poor maintainability. This poor maintainability arises as a consequence of (implementation of) architectures with low quality.
Here comes Ptidej!
If many solutions try to help developers in their tasks, most of them do not explore the real structure of the program.
Over the last years, Yann-Gaël Gueheneuc (Professor at Université de Montréal and now at École Polytechnique de Montreal) has been analyzing the architecture of object-oriented programs. He later came up with Ptidej.
Ptidej understands the structure of any object oriented programs, detects its flaws (based on a set of rules), and suggests a correction.
In a metaphor, one could compare Ptidej to the grammatical corrector of MS World while currently available products could be more associated with its spell checker.
How it works? Yann and his team develped a proprietary language that allows anyone to define an error to detect (The current version detects the most reported ones: blob, spaghetti code, etc…).
What’s next? Offering free beta tests in return for feedbacks
A free beta version of Ptidej is availble on Flintbox. It allows you to test your own program (in Java) and identify potential flaws.
It is, of course, our intention to commercially deploy Ptidej. In the meantime, we are welcoming any feedbacks and/or partnerships with companies, investors or entrepreneurs willing to collaborate with us to bring Ptidej to market.
Please feel free to contact me if you require more information.
Cheers,
Thomas
Further info about Ptidej:
Demo version
Video
Presentation in the Vector Newsletter
sources:
1: William J. Brown, “AntiPatterns: Refactoring Software, Architectures, and Projects in Crisis”
2: Jussi Koskinen, Software Maintenance Costs
3: Bennet P. Lientz, Problems in application software maintenance
