A Systematic Literature Review on Empirical Analysis of the Relationship Between Code Smells and Software Quality Attributes

Code smells indicate problems in design or code which makes software hard to change and maintain. It has become a sign of software systems that cause complications in maintaining software quality. The detection of harmful code smells which deteriorate the software quality has resulted in a favourable shift in interest among researchers. Therefore, a significant research towards analysing the impact of code smells on software quality has been conducted over the last few years. This study aims at reporting a systematic literature review of such existing empirical studies investigate the impact of code smells on software quality attributes. The results indicate that the impact of code smells on software quality is not uniform as different code smells have the opposite effect on different software quality attributes. The findings of this review will provide the awareness to the researchers and a practitioner regarding the impact of code smells on software quality. It would be more advantageous to conduct further studies that consider less explored code smells, least or not investigated quality attributes, involve industry researchers and use large commercial software systems.