Identifying the starting impact set of a maintenance request: a case study

This paper deals with impact analysis and proposes a method based on information retrieval techniques to trace the text of a maintenance request onto the set of system components initially affected by the maintenance request. The correct identification of such components is crucial for the future design and implementation of the change. The paper also discusses results from a preliminary case study where two different information retrieval approaches have been used to retrieve the software documents relevant for a maintenance request.