Measurement of change: stable and change-prone constructs in a commercial C++ system

Author

Lindvall, Mikael

Author_Institution

Fraunfofer Center for Exp. Software Eng., MD, USA

fYear

1999

fDate

1999

Firstpage

40

Lastpage

49

Abstract

Our previous studies of developers´ ability to predict software change revealed a great potential for improvement of the change management process. What we consider most beneficial is characterizing and understanding software change by measuring it and identifying what kind of changes take place and how frequent they are. With such knowledge, it is possible to build change models that help developers make better predictions regarding future requirements. An analysis is presented of a commercial object-oriented system-the PMR (Performance Management traffic Recording) system of Ericsson Radio Systems-that was changed significantly due to the implementation of a set of new requirements. Measures are used in order to identify stable and change-prone constructs of the system. The results from the analysis are complemented with results from interviews with developers about what changes most frequently in a C++ system

Keywords

management of change; object-oriented programming; software maintenance; software management; software metrics; software process improvement; telecommunication computing; telecommunication traffic recording; Ericsson Radio Systems; PMR system; change measurement; change-prone constructs; commercial C++ system; future requirements; interviews; new requirements; object-oriented system; performance management traffic recording; software change management process improvement; software change prediction; software developers; stable constructs; Q measurement;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Software Metrics Symposium, 1999. Proceedings. Sixth International

Conference_Location

Boca Raton, FL

Print_ISBN

0-7695-0403-5

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/METRIC.1999.809724

Filename

809724