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Use Case - Diagnosing Declining Maintainability

publish date: 2026/06/24 21:38:14.701128 UTC

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Over the past two years, a system's support team has noticed the average time to complete impact analysis has tripled, and the count of outstanding change requests has grown steadily each quarter. What does this combination of trends most likely indicate?

The system has reached perfect maintainability and requires no further monitoring

The system's maintainability is declining, likely due to accumulated structural degradation from repeated changes

The support team has too many staff members assigned to the project

The system's business value has increased proportionally with these metrics

Correct Answer

The system's maintainability is declining, likely due to accumulated structural degradation from repeated changes

Explanation

Both a rising average time for impact analysis and a growing backlog of outstanding change requests are recognized process metrics indicating declining maintainability. This pattern typically reflects accumulated structural degradation that makes each new change progressively harder to analyze and implement.

Reference

Software Engineering, Ian Sommerville, 10th edition

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