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Impact Analysis

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Engineering and Managing Software Requirements

Abstract

Software changes are necessary and inevitable in software development, but may lead to software deterioration if not properly controlled. Impact analysis is the activity of identifying what needs to be modified in order to make a change, or to determine the consequences on the system if the change is implemented. Most research on impact analysis is presented and discussed in literature related to software maintenance. In this chapter, we take a different approach and discuss impact analysis from a requirements engineering perspective. We relate software change to impact analysis, outline the history of impact analysis and present common strategies for performing impact analysis. We also mention the application of impact analysis to non-functional requirements and discuss tool support for impact analysis. Finally, we outline what we see as the future of this essential change management tool.

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Authors
  1. Per Jönsson
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  2. Mikael Lindvall
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Information Systems, Technology and Management, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, 2052, Australia

    Aybüke Aurum

  2. School of Engineering, Blekinge Institute of Technology, Box 520, 372 25, Ronneby, Sweden

    Claes Wohlin

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© 2005 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Jönsson, P., Lindvall, M. (2005). Impact Analysis. In: Aurum, A., Wohlin, C. (eds) Engineering and Managing Software Requirements. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-28244-0_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-28244-0_6

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-25043-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-28244-0

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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