The authors describe the possible ripple effect of program modifications during the maintenance phase on the performance of a program and present a technique for the analysis of this performance ripple effect in large-scale Ada programs. The significance of this type of maintenance technique is its contribution to an engineering approach to large-scale software maintenance. By predicting the repercussions generated by software modifications, it can aid maintenance personnel in their selection of modification alternatives. It can also help in the retesting phase to determine whether any performance requirements have been violated by the maintenance activity.