A software model for impact analysis: a validation experiment

Impact analysis is the process of identifying software work products that may be affected by proposed changes. This requires a software representation model that can formalize the knowledge about the various dependencies between work products. This study was carried out with the aim of objectively assessing whether the effectiveness of an impact analysis approach depends on the software dependency model employed. ANALYST, a tool for impact analysis, was used to implement different impact analysis approaches. The results show that the nature of the components and the traceability relationships employed for impact analysis influence the effectiveness of the approach, but different traceability models affect the various aspects of effectiveness differently. Moreover, this influence is independent of the software development approach, but is sensitive to software quality decay.