ESDM - A Method for Developing Evolutionary Scenarios for Analysing the Impact of Historical Changes on Architectural Elements

Software maintainers need appropriate information concerning the change they are about to make to a software system so that they can make suitable choices in their decisions. In this paper, we describe a method (called ESDM) for developing evolutionary scenarios that provide information concerning the impact historical changes of different types have had on the quality of software architectural elements of interest. This information can aid in the decisions maintainers are about to make concerning the change at hand. The effectiveness of the method for developing evolutionary scenarios has been validated through an empirical study on an open source software system (Apache HTTP Server 1.3). Initial support from maintainers for the value of the developed scenarios is a major boost for further work in this area