The automated extraction of requirements from UML models

We have observed that often there is a disconnect between a UML model and the requirements of the modeled processes. This gap tends to widen as models become more complex and the extraction of detailed requirements becomes more difficult. The process by which detailed requirements are extracted from a model is fairly straightforward. Not only can the technique be used to extract requirements, but, interestingly enough, the same information that is extracted can be used to generate the task list part of a project plan, as the concrete use cases identify the pieces of software that need to be implemented. The use case model is basically an acyclic directed graph, with dependencies as vertices and use cases as nodes. In order for the extraction process to work, the use case model needs to be built following certain guidelines. For example: No dependency cycles and model continuity (e.g. a single continuous directed graph).