Change impact analysis for requirement evolution using use case maps

Changing customer needs and computer technology are the driving factors influencing software evolution. There is a need to assess the impact of these changes on exist-ing software systems. Requirement specification is gaining increasingly attention as a critical phase of software sys-tems development process. In particular for larger systems, it quickly becomes difficult to comprehend what impact a requirement change might have on the overall system or parts of the system. Thus, the development of techniques and tools to support the evolution of requirement specifica-tions becomes an important issue. In this paper we present a novel approach to change impact analysis at the require-ment level. We apply both slicing and dependency analysis at the Use Case Map specification level to identify the po-tential impact of requirement changes on the overall system. We illustrate our approach and its applicability with a case study conducted on a simple telephony system.