Software Agility

11 March 2016

Indicators & Methodology, Software Health

Definition

Software Agility indicates the easiness of a development team to understand and maintain an application. This index is derived from technology-specific code analysis which searches for the presence of embedded documentation and code readability good practices.

Thresholds

Thresholds used for Software Agility categories:

Low/Red: below 54.0
Medium/Orange: from 54.0 to 69.0
High/Green: above 69.0

Code Insights

Find below some code insight examples which contribute to the Software Agility index.

Avoid long ‘if/else if’ chains that could be replaced by a ‘switch’ statement

Avoid useless overriding method

The code contains too many uppercase control structure keywords

The code contains too many functions, interfaces or classes with closing not commented

The code contains too many functions throwing exceptions that have inconsistencies in “@throws” tags

The code contains too many functions not complying with naming conventions

The code contains too many class names that do not begin with an uppercase letter

Prefer to use an expression body for functions whose body consists of a single expression

Use short variable declarations (:=) for variables with default values

Avoid naming unused receivers

Avoid instantiation with new

Avoid ‘switch’ with too many ‘case’ statements

Variables should not be shadowed

In switch ‘default’ clauses should be last

A field should not duplicate the name of its containing class

Use == instead of ?: when dealing with nullable boolean

Prefer using expression Form for ‘if’ or ‘when’ in place of statement syntax

Do not use a labeled return for the last statement in a lambda

Avoid using multiple labeled returns in lambda expression

Use Elvis operator to avoid unclear syntax pattern

Adaptability Risk