Design units — a layered approach for design driven software development

Abstract

The challenge faced by software developers is to establish a manageable relationship between design and implementation. This paper describes an integrated, traceable software development approach in the context of a use case design methodology that achieves several quality control properties. The foundation for this approach lies in partitioning the design schemata into a layered architecture of functional components called design units. Design units provide the basis for the automatic generation of modular source code, the traceability of requirements throughout the software development process and the framework for a systematic approach to change management.