A Screening Criterion for Delivered Source in Military Software. Volume I.

The goal of this study is to identify measurable characteristics of the program source code that indicate the likelihood of future changes to the program modules. These changes include both repair of software errors and improvement in software performance. Source code data and module change data were analyzed to correlate the source code characteristics with the number of changes made to the modules. The following conclusions were reached 1 a pair of source code parameters sizestructure in a linear relationship is a useful predictor of the number of changes, 2 a single parameter is not sufficient as a predictor of future change and, 3 multiple parameters and non-linear relationships do not significantly improve the prediction over the two parameter linear case.