Linking software design metrics to component change-proneness
Claire Ingram, Steve Riddle · 2011
One technique from value-based software engineering involves prioritising the system and selectively applying time-consuming techniques (such as traceability) in order to maximise return on investment. This prioritisation could be based on predicted change-proneness of code modules, if a sufficiently accurate prediction can be achieved. Several previous studies have examined links between software change-proneness and software metrics such as size and complexity. However, conclusions differ as to the strength of the relationships. We present here a new case study project, extracting a range of complexity values from the code modules and testing for the existence of a significant link between change-proneness and complexity. We find only limited evidence of a linear relationship, but analysis using other statistical techniques does reveal some other significant links.