On the Relationship Between Change Coupling and Software Defects

Abstract

Change coupling is the implicit relationship between two or more software artifacts that have been observed to frequently change together during the evolution of a software system. Researchers have studied this dependency and have observed that it points to design issues such as architectural decay. It is still unknown whether change coupling correlates with a tangible effect of design issues, i.e., software defects.In this paper we analyze the relationship between change coupling and software defects on three large software systems. We investigate whether change coupling correlates with defects, and if the performance of bug prediction models based on software metrics can be improved with change coupling information.