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Improving Quality of Use-Case Models by Correlating Defects, Difficulties, and Modeling Strategies

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Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS 2020)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing ((LNBIP,volume 417))

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Abstract

Use case (UC) models play an essential role in software specification since they describe system functional requirements. A UC model should be free of defects due to its relevance and impact throughout the software development life cycle. However, inspections in UC models frequently identify defects related to modelers’ difficulties in different activities during the modeling process. The quality of a UC model is usually analyzed based on quality criteria such as ambiguity and inconsistency. Several strategies in the literature assist use case modeling in mitigating defects, but these strategies do not identify which potential defects they aim to prevent or eliminate. In this context, we proposed a correlation between UC modeling difficulties and strategies to mitigate these difficulties based on UC’s quality criteria. In this paper, we describe each strategy contained in the correlation and present, in detail, the controlled experiment that assesses the correlation effectiveness, including the discrete data collected in analyzing the participants’ models and statistical analysis performed in these data. Besides, we also propose a mechanism to guide in elaborating checklists to identify defects in UC models focusing on quality criteria. Through a controlled experiment, we evaluate the Antipattern strategy, and the results showed a clear indication that this strategy mitigates the difficulties in which it is related according to the correlation. Besides, the UC models developed in the experiment were evaluated using the checklist generated based on the proposed mechanism.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Salvador University, Salvador, Brazil

    Cristiana Pereira Bispo, Ana Patrícia Magalhães & Sergio Fernandes

  2. Department of Exact Sciences and Earth, State University of Bahia, Salvador, Brazil

    Ana Patrícia Magalhães

  3. Computer Science Department, Federal University of Bahia, Salvador, Brazil

    Cristiana Pereira Bispo & Ivan Machado

Authors
  1. Cristiana Pereira Bispo
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  2. Ana Patrícia Magalhães
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  3. Sergio Fernandes
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  4. Ivan Machado
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Correspondence to Cristiana Pereira Bispo .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Polytechnic Institute of Setúbal/INSTICC, Setúbal, Portugal

    Joaquim Filipe

  2. Warsaw University of Technology, Warsaw, Poland

    Michał Śmiałek

  3. George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA

    Alexander Brodsky

  4. MODESTE/ESEO, Angers, France

    Slimane Hammoudi

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Bispo, C.P., Magalhães, A.P., Fernandes, S., Machado, I. (2021). Improving Quality of Use-Case Models by Correlating Defects, Difficulties, and Modeling Strategies. In: Filipe, J., Śmiałek, M., Brodsky, A., Hammoudi, S. (eds) Enterprise Information Systems. ICEIS 2020. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 417. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-75418-1_17

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-75418-1_17

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