Design units - a layered approach for design driven software development

The challenge faced by software developers is to establish a manageable rel ationship between design and implementation. This paper describes an integr ated, traceable software development approach in the context of a use case design methodology that achieves several quality control properties. The fo undation for this approach lies in partitioning the design schemata into a layered architecture of functional components called design units. Design u nits provide the basis for the automatic generation of modular source code, the traceability of requirements throughout the software development proce ss and the framework for a systematic approach to change management. (C) 20 01 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.