Significance of Coupling and Cohesion on Design Quality

Abstract: In recent years, the complexity of the software is increasing due to automation of every segment of application. Software is nowhere remained as one-time development product since its architectural dimension is increasing with addition of new requirements over a short duration. Object Oriented Development (OOD) methodology is a popular development approach for such systems which perceives and models the requirements as real world entities. Classes and Objects logically represent the entities in the solution space and quality of the software is directly depending on the design quality of these logical entities. Cohesion and Coupling (C&C) are two major design decisive factors in OOD which impacts the design of a class and dependency between them in complex software. It is also most significant to measure C&C for software to control the complexity level as requirements increases. Several metrics are in practice to quantify C&C which plays a major role in measuring the design quality. The software industries are focusing on increasing and measuring the quality of the product through quality design to continue their market image in the competitive world. As a part of our research, this paper highlights on the impact of C&C on design quality of a complex system and its measures to quantify the overall quality of software.