This paper is highly recommended for reading:

Vadim Zaytsev. Software Language Engineers' Worst Nightmare. SLE 2020. [PDF] [YouTube]
- introduces BabyCobol and contains much information useful for the project

These papers are recommended only if you want to study the original sources, gain experience in reading academic literature or deepen your own understanding of software evolution:

Level 1 theory:
- Tom Mens, Michel Wermelinger, Stéphane Ducasse, Serge Demeyer, Robert Hirschfeld, Mehdi Jazayeri. Challenges in Software Evolution. IWPSE 2005. [PDF] [rest of the workshop]
  - a somewhat exhaustive and systematic list of challenges in the software evolution field, collected in 2005
- Meir Lehman. Programs, Life Cycles, and Laws of Software Evolution. Proceedings of the IEEE 68:9, 1980.[PDF]
  - the first paper by Lehman that introduced the idea of software evolution laws (only contains the first five)
- Victor Basili, Gianluigi Caldiera, Dieter Rombach. The Goal Question Metric Approach. 1994 [PDF]
  - introduces the method explain in the topic material
- Edward Lee et al. Cyber-Physical Systems — a Concept Map. online. [interactive]