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Unified use case statecharts: case studies

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Abstract

This paper presents the results of case studies evaluating a method of unifying use cases (UCs) to derive a unified statechart model of the behavior of the domain of a proposed computer-based system. An evaluation of the unification method, the obtained statechart model of the domain, the method’s and model’s feedback on the UCs themselves, and how the method is used in requirements engineering practice was carried out by examining 58 software requirements specifications produced by 189 upper-year undergraduate and graduate students. The results of these studies independently confirm some of the benefits of building a unified SC mentioned in the works of Glinz; Whittle and Schumann; and Harel, Kugler, and Pnueli.

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Notes

  1. http://se.uwaterloo.ca/~dberry/cs445w06.

  2. http://se.uwaterloo.ca/~dberry/ATRE/ElevatorSRSs/.

  3. Note, this model should not be confused with any high-level business model. The difference is in the abstraction and decomposition levels.

  4. Note, the case study description includes all steps as recommended to the students for their projects and as described in Sect. 4.2. Some of the steps in this case study are simplified and do not fully conform to the steps of the process either due to the way initial UCs were specified, e.g., there are no specified goals in Step 1, or due to the simplifications made due to the simplicity of the problem itself.

  5. http://se.uwaterloo.ca/~dberry/cs445w06/turnstilesystem.pdf.

  6. The unadorned noun “author” in the rest of Sect. 5 refers to the first author of this paper who guided these tutorial sessions.

  7. A step of a UC is called an “operation” to avoid confusion with a step of the construction carried out in the TCS.

  8. That this state is a sub-machine state is indicated by the infinity-like symbol inside the state in Fig. 6.

  9. Each of the works described in this chapter uses the term “scenario” for what we call “UC”.

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Acknowledgments

We thank all students and TAs who participated in the case studies and who provided feedback. We thank all reviewers of all earlier versions of this paper for their helpful comments. Davor Svetinovic’s work was supported in parts by Canadian NSERC Postgraduate Scholarship PGS B-255929-2002 and a Canadian FCAR Doctoral Scholarship. Daniel Berry’s, Michael Godfrey’s, and Nancy Day’s work was supported in part by Canadian NSERC Grant Numbers NSERC-RGPIN227055-00, NSERC-RGPIN217236-99, and NSERC-RGPIN240537-01, respectively.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Computer Technology, Vienna University of Technology, 1040, Vienna, Austria

    Davor Svetinovic

  2. David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    Daniel M. Berry, Nancy A. Day & Michael W. Godfrey

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  1. Davor Svetinovic
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  2. Daniel M. Berry
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Correspondence to Davor Svetinovic.

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Svetinovic, D., Berry, D.M., Day, N.A. et al. Unified use case statecharts: case studies. Requirements Eng 12, 245–264 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00766-007-0053-1

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