Measuring technology effects on software change cost

We describe a methodology for precise quantitative measurement of technolog y impact on software change effort. The methodology employs measures of sma ll software changes to determine the effect of technology. We illustrate th is approach in a detailed case study on the impact of using two particular technologies-a version-sensitive source code editor and a domain-engineered application environment-in a telecommunications product In both cases, the change effort was reduced. The methodology can precisely measure cost savi ngs in change effort and is simple and inexpensive, since it relies on info rmation automatically collected by Version control systems.