Software developers require information to understand the characteristics of systems, such as complexity and maintainability. In\r\norder to further understand and determine characteristics of object-oriented (OO) systems, this paper describes research that\r\nidentifies attributes that are valuable in determining the difficulty in implementing changes during maintenance, as well as the\r\npossible effects that such changesmay produce.Aset ofmetrics are proposed to quantify and measure these attributes.Theproposed\r\ncomplexity metrics are used to determine the difficulty in implementing changes through the measurement of method complexity,\r\nmethod diversity, and complexity density.The paper establishes impact metrics to determine the potential effects of making changes\r\nto a class and dependence metrics that are used to measure the potential effects on a given class resulting from changes in other\r\nclasses. The case study shows that the proposed metrics provide additional information not sufficiently provided by the related\r\nexistingOOmetrics.Themetrics are also found to be useful in the investigation of large systems, correlating with project outcomes.
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