The application of use case definitions in system design specification

We review the application of use case analysis to the software development process and identify several problems associated with the representation of complex scenario interleaving, particularly with respect to concurrent act ivity. In order to represent such behaviour mon succinctly, we have investi gated the use of finite state techniques in the form of statecharts to repr esent use case structures and present two case studies to demonstrate their application. These use case definitions are concerned with modelling softw are and peripheral behaviour and are hence proposed as a first level of des ign specification. Of particular interest is the use of such structures to represent the scenario interleaving associated with concurrent activity. (C ) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.