Described is a system and method for identifying dependency relationships between components in a group of software components. Given a group of software components, a set of direct dependencies between each of the components and any other component is identified. The direct dependencies are indicated in a square matrix where each component in the group of components has a corresponding row and column. A particular component has the same row number as column number in the matrix. Multiplying that the matrix by itself identifies second-order dependencies. Higher order dependencies are identified by repeating the multiplication of the resultant matrix by the first-order dependency matrix. In other words, multiplying the third-order matrix by the first-order matrix achieves the fourth-order matrix, and so on.