Given a change proposal, how can we evaluate the changeability of the original system to absorb this change proposal before change implementation? Changes to software often have unexpected ripple effects. To avoid this and alleviate the risk of performing undesirable changes, a predictive measurement of these ripple effects should be conducted and a decision of acceptance or rejection should be made on this change proposal. In this paper, we propose an approach to evaluate a software system's changeability with two steps. First, our approach uses formal concept analysis to perform change impact analysis ($CIA$), which estimates the ripple effects of the change proposal. Then, we propose a novel impactness metric to indicate the system's changeability to absorb this change proposal. Case studies on three real-world programs show the effectiveness of our changeability assessment approach.
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机译：给定一个变更建议，我们如何在变更实施之前评估原始系统的可变性以吸收该变更建议？软件更改通常会产生意想不到的连锁反应。为了避免这种情况并减轻执行不良更改的风险，应该对这些连锁反应的影响进行预测性测量，并应对此更改建议做出接受或拒绝的决定。在本文中，我们提出了一种通过两个步骤来评估软件系统的可更改性的方法。首先，我们的方法使用形式化的概念分析来执行变更影响分析（$ CIA $），它估计变更建议的连锁反应。然后，我们提出了一种新颖的影响度指标，以指示系统的可吸收性以吸收此变更建议。对三个现实世界计划的案例研究表明了我们的可变性评估方法的有效性。
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