An exploratory case study of the maintenance effectiveness of traceability models

Analysing the role of traceability models in software maintenance and comprehension is an important research issue. An exploratory case study evaluating the relationship between the granularity of the traceability model adopted and the effectiveness of the maintenance process is presented in this paper. Two maintenance effectiveness aspects were taken into account: efficiency and accuracy. The analysis was carried out in an object-oriented environment, with the support of an integrated platform of software tools. The preliminary results show that some aspects of the effectiveness of the maintenance process can be improved by modifying the degree of granularity of the model. These results encourage further research into this topic, while some additional side-effects that emerged from the study are also investigated.