Software Models for Source Code Maintainability: A Systematic Literature Review

In this study, we collected evidence from empirical studies published over two decades-from 1995 to 2018-to answer the following general research question: "What is the current existing empirical evidence concerning the use of software modeling to support source code maintenance?" We carried out a systematic literature review on research published in relevant journals, as well as conference and workshop proceedings, to investigate various aspects of our general research question. Although there is a common belief that software models are beneficial for source code maintainability, this aspect has been scarcely investigated in the literature and only a few empirical studies have been conducted in an industrial context. Moreover, most of the used models are UML. As so, our study shows that there is a small body of research related to this field.