Empirical Software Engineering
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Use Case (UC) models describe functional requirements as a set of interactions between a software system and its environment. In essence, UC descriptions state a set of workflows that will allow a system's user to benefit from its services. It is critical that designers have a common and precise understanding of what these workflows are. Otherwise they are in danger of building the 'wrong' system. Traditionally, UC descriptions are authored using natural language, which as shown in this article, proves to be a poor vehicle, and insufficient, to describe the underlying workflows. Simply, the inherit ambiguity in natural language leads to misinterpretations and misunderstandings. UC diagrams do not provide any information about the dependencies between workflows spanning several UCs. In this paper, we present the process AGADUC, which will systematically generate activity-like diagrams that represent the embedded workflows in the UC textual descriptions. AGADUC provides a great deal of information regarding how UCs are dependent on each other, without the need to iterate through several pages of UC descriptions. Using activitylike diagrams will ensure that all stakeholders have a precise and consistent understanding of the workflows. A case study conducted on a simplified Library case is presented and have shown that AGADUC overcomes many limitations in traditional UC models. The featured tool AREUCD automates the AGADUC process and it is demonstrated within the case study.