The Prism model of changes

The author addresses the problem of managing changes to items of various types in a multitype software environment. Prism, a model of changes, has been designed with the following features: (1) a separation of concern between changes to the described items and changes to the environmental facilities housing these items; (2) a facility, called the dependency structure, for describing various items and their interdependencies, and for identifying the items affected by a given change; (3) a facility, called the change structure, for classifying, recording and analyzing change related data, and for making qualitative judgments of the consequences of a change; (4) identification of the many distinct properties of a change; and (5) a built-in mechanism for providing feedback. The rationale for the design of the model of changes as well as that of the dependency structure and the change structure is given