Impact of Code Smells on Software Quality: A Systematic Literature Review

ABSTRACT Context Code smells are issues in the code that can damage the code quality and adversely impact software quality attributes. The real effect of code smells on software development remains a subject of ongoing research. Objective The main purpose of this study is to analyze and uncover the previous studies on how different code smells affect software quality. This study targets the most common factors of code smell. Method This study provides a systematic review on the code smells. SLR Protocol is designed and executed accordingly. Results As a result of SLR, data were extracted from 42 research papers and as a result, a total of 11 code smells were identified. Identified code smells were analyzed based on their impact on different factors such as factors that are caused by these code smells such as why code smells are developed in software systems, how code smells generate other code smells, and which code smells still need to be addressed. Conclusion This study provided a systematic examination into the observation of code smells and their impacts on software development. The most affected factors from code smells are addressed in this research. The purpose of this research is to provide software developers and engineers with a complete understanding of code smells via SLR. Each study defines specific code smells and examines their effects on particular aspects of the code in previous research. The basic context to seeing the code smell is to find the nature and reliance of the code smell. In light of existing studies, a common issue identified by software professionals is that code smells have a significant impact on software quality, thereby degrading the overall quality of software products.