Patent ID: 7716649

Claim:
A method of managing traceability information of a software program, comprising the computer implemented steps of: given a subject software program, providing a respective history log for each artifact of the program; recording in the respective history log sets of changes made to an artifact of the subject software program, each set of changes indicating and producing respective files, and each set of changes being for a respective activity indicative of user usage, different sets indicating different user's usage of the artifact, wherein the respective history log holds (i) indications of activities and (ii) per activity, indications of a responding set of changes; during a change being made to the artifact, determining from the respective history log which files are relatively more related to which artifacts, including referring to the respective history log and on a per activity, per change set basis counting respective occurrences of other files indicated in each change set, the file with the greatest number of occurrences being determined to be a most likely related file of the artifact, and the file with the second greatest number of occurrences being determined to be a next likely related file of the artifact, such that artifact dependency relationships are inferred from the activities recorded and from the activities as recorded being indicative of day to day usage by users, said determining resulting in determined-by-inference-to-be-related artifacts; and providing activity based change management by displaying an indication of the determined-by-inference-to-be-related artifacts as impact analysis results, including outputting an ordered list indicating the files from highest to lowest relative frequency of occurrences as being highest probable to lowest probable files being related to the artifact, the file determined to be the most likely related file being listed first.