Design Patterns and Change Proneness: A Replication Using Proprietary C# Software

This paper documents a study of change in commercial, proprietary software and attempts to determine whether a relationship exists between a class´ propensity to change and its design context; more specifically: whether a class is a participant in a design pattern. We identify specific design patterns and their propensity for change. Design pattern participants were found to have a higher propensity to change than classes that did not participate in a design pattern, supporting an earlier study by Bieman et al.; some design patterns, such as the adaptor, factory method and singleton were found have a higher change propensity than others.