An Approach for Change Impact Analysis in Web systems - A Industrial Case study

Abstract

There is a growing body of research on change impact analysis (CIA) approaches that specifically addresses changes and their impacts on architecture design. However, there is little research focus on approaches that particularly support the identification of impacts on architecture design resulting from business process changes i.e. early identification of change impacts in Web systems. To address this problem, we have proposed a systematic, structured and rigorous approach called as process model of CIA (PMCIA). PMCIA consists of a set of defined steps/activities, inputs, outputs, and employs architecture design information. In this paper we have presented the results of PMCIA validation in industrial setting through a detailed case study. The case study was carried out across two releases of a selected Web system project in an organization. The case study results indicate that the proposed approach, indeed, supports for early identification of change impacts in Web systems and provides Web developers the necessary components for systematically performing CIA.