Rapid prototyping in der use-case-zentrierten Anforderungsanalyse

The requirements analysis is one of the central success factors in software development projects. In the last three decades use-case-centered analysis has become a standard approach for the analysis of interactive information systems. Here a use case model is the central artifact for the whole requirements analysis process. All other requirements artifacts are being connected with this model. Different studies show that prototyping can raise the quality of the results of a requirements analysis considerably. The communication between project stakeholders is improved, if an executable model of the target system is available early. Thus the validation of requirements is simplified. Furthermore prototyping is beneficial for the usability of software and it reduces acceptance problems. Yet prototyping isn’t used to its full potential in current use-case-centered requirements analyses. Reasons are the insufficient integration of modeling notations, the lack of a consistent methodical approach and unsuitable tool support. The notations, methods and tools developed in this work try to close these gaps between the use-case centered analysis and prototyping. The essence of the work is SUPrA, a model based prototyping process. Here requirements are specified based on UCSM a use case centered notation for requirements. UCSM has a formally defined semantic. This facilitates a fully automated generation of different kinds of user interface prototypes from UCSM models. SUPrA is embedded in an integrated tool support. OpenUMF supports the specification of UCSM models and the generation of prototypes a well as their evaluation. Thus prototypes can be used at all times during the analysis process, since no manual effort for the adoption of prototypes after changes to the specification is required. Finally SUPrA is embedded in a methodical approach that integrates prototyping activities in a use case centered analysis. Use Case specifications are being developed in several phases iteratively and incrementally. During this process prototypes are used for analytical and constructive quality assurance. The applicability and scalability of the developed approaches has been demonstrated in several projects in research and industry