Software Project Longevity

This book shows how to find out what makes a (open source) software project so successful, that its software is used for a long time, and how to measure this longevity beforehand. The methodical approach involves a systematic literature research (SLR) on project health indicators, which identifies successfully software projects, metrics and tools. A tool selection process finds the most suitable tools for building a framework for longevity evaluation based on quality attributes from ISO SQuaRE. The result is a set of tools that forms an evaluation framework to estimate quality attributes, metrics, and key performance indicators with focus on software project longevity. Open source software projects from related work evaluate the framework. Main outcome is a short list of metrics measuring quality attributes important for longevity. A feasibility study shows these metrics can be used to measure aspects of longevity.