A subject-based empirical evaluation of SSUCD's performance in reducing inconsistencies in use case models

  • Authors:

  • Mohamed El-Attar;James Miller

  • Affiliations:

  • STEAM Laboratory, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada T6G 2V4;STEAM Laboratory, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada T6G 2V4

  • Venue:
  • Empirical Software Engineering
  • Year:
  • 2009

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Abstract

The problem of inconsistencies in Use Case models has plagued practitioners over the years and has been a topic of interest for many researchers. In Use Case driven approaches, the damaging effects of inconsistencies escalate as inconsistencies have a detrimental influence on every aspect of the development process. The repercussions of inconsistencies have been well documented, but little progress has been made towards reducing and remedying their effects. This paper presents a controlled experiment, which evaluates the reduction of inconsistencies resulting from deploying a new structure called (Simple Structured Use Case Descriptions) SSUCD, which is used to assist with the development of Use Case descriptions. This experiment also investigates the impact of improving consistency amongst Use Case models on other key Use Case modeling quality attributes. The results of this experiment demonstrate that using SSUCD leads to an improvement in consistency between use case models and their associated descriptions.