Considering Partially Developed Artifacts in Change Impact Analysis Implementation

It is important to manage the changes in the software to meet the evolving needs of the customer and hence, satisfy them. Accepting too many changes causes delay in the completion and it incurs additional cost. One type of information that helps to make the decision is the prediction of the number of classes affected by the changes or change impact analysis. Current impact analysis approaches assume that all classes in the class artifact are completely developed, and the class artifact is used as a source of analysis since it represents the final user requirements. However, these assumptions are impractical for impact analysis in the software development phase as some classes in the class artifact are still under development or partially developed that leads to inaccuracy. This article presents a novel impact analysis approach to be used in the software development phase. The significant achievements of the approach are demonstrated through an extensive experimental validation using several case studies. The experimental analysis shows improvement in the accuracy over current impact analysis results.