Using static and dynamic impact analysis for effort estimation

Abstract

Change effort estimation is needed not only in software maintenance phase, but also in the software development phase. Many techniques have been developed to estimate required change effort for a particular change request. One of these techniques is impact analysis. One main challenge of this technique from a software development perspective is that the existence of inconsistent states of some software artefacts, i.e. some classes have completely developed and some of them partially developed. Therefore, this research proposes a new change effort estimation model that overcomes this challenge using a combination of static and dynamic analysis techniques. The results of this research are two-fold: (i) a new change effort estimation model using static and dynamic analysis techniques for software development phase; and (ii) demonstration of significant achievements of the approach via extensive experimental validation using several case studies.