Mendix, a leader in digital innovation and application Platform-as-a-Service (aPaaS), and SIG, an independent advisory firm for software quality and improvement, today announced a partnership and the launch of Mendix Application Quality Monitor, a cloud-based service designed to help customers proactively monitor the maintainability of Mendix applications.

Mendix is the platform of choice for top brands implementing bimodal IT, an approach that enables organizations to combine the rock-solid 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.

According to research firm Gartner, Inc., “Anyone can go faster; the challenge is doing so sustainably. 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.”1

Mendix Application Quality Monitor enables customers 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 the ISO 25010 standard for maintainability. The 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.

“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,” added Joost Visser, Head of research at SIG and Professor, Large Scale Software Systems, at Radboud University. “We are excited to partner with Mendix and launch an industry-first cloud service to manage software quality of applications built on a model-driven development platform.”

“As customers strategically adopt Mendix to rapidly develop a portfolio of digital initiatives, the agile development process itself must foundationally incorporate maintainability and sustainability,” added Roald Kruit, Mendix co-founder and leader of the Mendix Digital Transformation Practice. “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.”