The taxonomy of CASE Tools

CASE Tool Taxonomy

CASE tools can be classified by

· by function,

· by user type (e.g. manager, tester), or

· by stage in SE process (e.g. requirements, test)

The following taxonomy is classified by function.

Business Information Tools model business information flow. The tools represent business data object and model their flow. Network tools could be modified to yield the same functionality.

Process Management Tools model processes. You have to understand the process in order to model it. The tools help you capture process. This is a key component of TQI.

Project Planning Tools help plan and schedule projects. Examples are PERT and CPM. Finding parallelismand eliminating bottlenecks assist in streamlining projects.

Risk Analysis Tools helps build a risk table from the schedule outlining the risk each component of the production process and categorizing the risks as catastrophic, critical, marginal, or negligible. A cost is associated with each risk. Calculated formulas measure the risk at each stage of development.

Project Management Tool track the progress of the project. They feed from the Project Scheduling tools and then use those tools to update plans and schedules.

Requirements Tracing Tools provide a systematic approach to isolate customer requirements and then to trace these requirements in each stage of development. In particular, one can take implementation code and point to the requirement that is met by the code.

Metrics Tools capture specific metrics that provide an overall measure of quality. Examples could be "defects per function point", "LOC/person-month", and so forth.

Documentation Tools include word processors that give templates for the organization process documents.

System Software Tools includes email, bulletin boards, and www access.

Quality Assurance Tools are actually metrics tools that audit source code to insure compliance with language standards. (lint is an ancient example)

Database Management Tools provides consistent interfaces for the project for all data, in particular the configuration objects are primary repository elements.

Software configuration Management Tools is the keystone to CASE. It assists with identification, version control, change control, auditing, and status accounting.