A light-weight proactive software change impact analysis using use case maps

Abstract

Changing customer needs and technology are driving factors influencing software evolution. Consequently, there is a need to assess the impact of these changes on existing software systems. For many users, technology is no longer the main problem, and it is likely to become a progressively smaller problem as standard solutions are provided by technology vendors. Instead, research will focus on the interface of the software with business practices. There exists a need to raise the level of abstraction further by analyzing and predicting the impact of changes at the specification level. In this research, we present a lightweight approach to identify the impact of requirement changes at the specification level. We use specification information included in use case maps to analyze the potential impact of requirement changes on a system.