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Most software is accompanied by frequent changes, whereas the implementation of a single change can affect many different parts of the system. Approaches for Impact Analysis have been developed to assist developers with changing software. However, there is no solid framework for classifying and comparing such approaches, and it is therefore hard to find a suitable technique with minimal effort. The contribution of this paper is a taxonomy for Impact Analysis, based on a literature review conducted on related studies, to overcome this limitation. The presented classification criteria are more detailed and precise than those proposed in previous work, and possible candidates for all criteria are derived from studied literature. We classify several approaches according to our taxonomy to illustrate its applicability and the usefulness of our criteria. The research presented in this paper prepares the ground for a comprehensive survey of Software Change Impact Analysis.
Steffen Lehnert (Mon,) studied this question.