Insights on improving the maintenance process through software measurement

The authors develop a model of software maintenance based upon an objective decision rule which determines whether a given software module can be effectively modified or whether it should instead be rewritten. Completely rewriting a module can be expensive, but it can be even more expensive if the module's structure has been severely degraded over successive maintenance activities. A module that is likely to experience significant maintenance activity is called change prone. The authors suggest that early identification of change-prone modules through the use of change measures across release cycles can be an effective technique in allocating maintenance resources.<>