RESUMEN

Managing software maintenance projects is difficult, particularly when the project being managed includes programs written by a different group or even a different company. Reverse engineering is an attractive technique to help understand a foreign program, but managing reverse-engineering efforts is difficult due to the lack of fixed standards for productivity and quality. Model-driven reverse engineering can help solve this problem. In particular, MDRE uses models to predict how much time a reverse-engineering effort will require and to provide a quality standard to evaluate that effort. This, in turn, enables better effort prediction and quality evaluation, reducing development risk. This article describes a particular approach to MDRE and presents an example of its use.