Organizational processes are dynamic and so is the software they use to meet the dynamic needs of various stakeholders in the process. Often, this dynamism shortens the life cycle of the software used. The life cycle of software largely depends on various metrics, including its design quality, the utility of the services it renders, and the reuse capabilities during various phases of maintenance. Therefore, software maintenance is an important dimension and an integral part of the software engineering discipline. Software refactoring has received adequate attention, especially in object-oriented systems, in order to optimize risk during various phases of the software development life cycle.

O’Keeffe and Ó Cinnéide discuss this important dimension of software engineering. Researchers can use this timely paper to gather and compare empirical evidence of the strengths and weaknesses of various techniques used for refactoring object-oriented systems. Although the paper focuses on search-based refactoring, it also provides insights into the refactoring process and the metrics developed to appreciate the associated fitness function. The paper presents three techniques, to substantiate the empirical research findings and compare their effectiveness and suitability for refactoring. Overall, the presentation is well organized and the exposition of the issues is clear. However, the paper is limited when it comes to describing the input scenarios and the use of relevant metrics while evaluating the techniques. A comparative statement of performance, with specific attention to the metrics, would have provided better insight into the work done. Furthermore, a discussion of contributions of the research to the abstractions and complexities of the algorithms presented, the benchmarking procedure adopted, and quantitative methods used for empirical analyses would have enriched the content of the paper.

Even so, the paper is important for researchers and practitioners to read to get an idea about existing refactoring approaches, and offers a possible framework to assess various techniques.