An experiment on the effect of design recording on impact analysis

An experimental study is presented in which participants perform impact analysis on alternate forms of design record information. The primary objective of the research is to assess the software maintainer´s performance with respect to various approaches of design recording. One of the approaches is the model dependency descriptor, which includes decision capturing and explicit traceability links between software objects and decisions. Results indicate that design recording approaches slightly differ in work completeness and time-to-finish, but the model dependency descriptor leads to the most accurate impact analysis. These results suggest that design records have the potential to be effective for software maintenance, but training and process discipline is needed to make design recording worthwhile