Handling the differential evolution of software artefacts: A framework for consistency management

Modern software systems are subject to frequent changes. Different artefacts of a system, such as requirements specifications, design documents and source code, often evolve at different times and become inconsistent with one another. This differential evolution poses problems to effective software maintenance and erodes trust in artefacts as accurate representation of the system. In this paper, we propose a holistic framework for managing the consistent co-evolution of software artefacts, incorporating: traceability creation and maintenance, change detection, impact analysis, consistency checking and change propagation.