Measurement of change: stable and change-prone constructs in a commercial C++ system

摘要

Our previous studies of developers' ability to predict software change revealed a great potential for improvement of the change management process. What we consider most beneficial is characterizing and understanding software change by measuringit and identifying what kind of changes take place and how frequent they are. With such knowledge it is possible to build change models that help developers make better predictions regarding future requirements.The analysis of a commercial object-oriented system (the PMR-system) that was changed significantly due to the implementation of a set of new requirements is presented. Measures are used in order to identify stable and change-prone constructs of thesystem. The results from the analysis are complemented with results from interviews with developers about what changes most frequently in a C+ + system.