Extracting artifact lifecycle models from metadata history

Software developers and managers make decisions based on the understanding they have of their software systems. This understanding is both built up experientially and through investigating various software development artifacts. While artifacts can be investigated individually, being able to summarize characteristics about a set of development artifacts can be useful. In this paper we propose lifecycle models as an effective way to gain an understanding of certain development artifacts. Lifecycle models capture the dynamic nature of how various development artifacts change over time in a graphical form that can be easily understood and communicated. Lifecycle models enables reasoning of the underlying processes and dynamics of the artifacts being analyzed. In this paper we describe how lifecycle models can be generated and demonstrate how they can be applied to the code review process of a development project.