Measuring Object-Oriented Design Principles: The Results of Focus Group-Based Research

Abstract

This work was published in the Journal of Systems and Software, Volume 140, June 2018,Pages 74-90, doi.org/10.1016/j.jss.2018.03.002. Object-oriented design principles are fundamentalconcepts that foster the development of software-intensive systems with a focus on good designquality. The aim of this paper is to examine the relationship between design best practices and 10selected design principles. This should provide evidence whether the key design aspects of the designprinciples are covered. We conducted focus group research with six focus groups and 31 participantsin total. Each group discussed five design principles and assessed the coverage by using the Delphimethod. The result reveals the impact of each design best practice to the design principle and showsthat the main design aspects of the design principles are covered by our approach.