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Mendix, an application platform-as-a-service (APaaS) provider, and Software Improvement Group (SIG), an independent advisory firm for software quality and improvement, have announced a partnership and the launch of Mendix Application Quality Monitor, a cloud-based service designed to help customers monitor the maintainability of Mendix applications.
The Mendix platform enables enterprises to implement bimodal IT, a Gartner research term for an IT approach that enables organizations to combine the capabilities of conventional IT with Mode 2 capabilities that enable the speed and agility required for digital innovation. One of the most common mistakes CIOs make when implementing Mode 2, however, is failing to maintain a disciplined focus on refactoring, resulting in ballooning technical debt, Gartner said.
“Anyone can go faster; the challenge is doing so sustainably,” said a Gartner report. “Technical debt refers to the loose ends that need resolving and the refactoring that is required as a result of the development process. The debt may take many forms, from design debt, to documentation debt, to unused and duplicated code. Addressing technical debt ensures that the software is well-architected, well-written and maintainable.”
The new Mendix Application Quality Monitor enables users to monitor software quality proactively and on a daily basis, improving maintainability and reducing lifecycle costs. The cloud service is powered by SIG, which performs a static analysis of Mendix application models according to the ISO 25010 standard for maintainability. SIG builds its industry benchmark for software quality by inspecting 500 software systems per year on technical quality according to ISO/IEC 25010 in the organization’s ISO 17025 accredited software laboratory.
The Mendix monitor’s analysis covers key aspects of the application such as analyzability, modifiability and modularity. It rates the application for parameters like volume, duplication, unit complexity and dependencies. A dashboard offers the quality rating on a scale from 1 to 5, and highlights potential areas for further investigation. The ratings are based on benchmarks of thousands of projects, Mendix said. Founded in 2000, SIG is a spinoff of the University of Amsterdam.
“Research tells us there’s a strong correlation between the cost and effort of handling issues and enhancements and the maintainability rating of an application. Issue resolution time and enhancement effort increase exponentially for applications with lower ratings,” said Joost Visser, head of research at SIG and professor of Large Scale Software Systems at Radboud University, in a statement. “We are partnering with Mendix and launch an industry-first cloud service to manage software quality of applications built on a model-driven development platform.”
Mendix helps enterprises achieve their digital transformation goals. The Mendix digital innovation platform empowers customers to bring new products to market, digitize customer engagement and automate unique business processes. The platform facilitates an iterative, collaborative approach to bring business and IT together to build and deploy innovative applications quickly with a low-code development environment.
Mendix is working to meet the needs of enterprises that are looking for ways to build mobile, Web and general enterprise apps faster, better and cheaper.
“As customers strategically adopt Mendix to rapidly develop a portfolio of digital initiatives, the agile development process itself must foundationally incorporate maintainability and sustainability,” said Roald Kruit, Mendix co-founder and leader of the Mendix Digital Transformation Practice, in a statement. “The Mendix Model API offers an open, metadata-based approach allowing specialist tools to analyze the software quality of Mendix models in real-time. Rather than performing quality analysis retrospectively, the Mendix Application Quality Monitoring service offers immediate visibility into the maintainability of applications as they are developed, helping to eliminate and prevent technical debt. We know of no other development approach that offers this level of integrated quality assurance.”