Recent Studies on the Effects of Refactoring in Software Quality: Challenges and Open Issues

Refactoring is widely thought to improve software quality. Several studies, however, claimed that the effect of refactoring on software quality could be positive, negative, or have no effect. When using refactoring techniques to improve software quality, software developers face difficulties in selecting appropriate techniques. There has been no research into the contradictions in the effect of refactoring on software quality. Therefore, this study reviewed 30 recent empirical studies on the effect of various refactoring techniques on various internal and external software quality attributes. This review has three goals: first, to identify related empirical studies; second, to identify the applied refactoring techniques, internal and external quality attributes, and third, to analyze the relationship between refactoring and software quality. There were 18 studies that found that refactoring improves software quality, and 12 studies that found the opposite. More research is needed to understand the trade-off between improving and worsening various attributes. Current challenges and open issues that need further investigation have been identified and discussed.

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