Decision-based-support-paradigm: a new method to structure source code

The decision-based software development (DBSD) paradigm is being developed to support the process of developing and maintaining software systems. The DBSD paradigm views the design process as a series of interrelated decisions which involve the identification and articulation of problems, alternatives, solutions, and justifications. Decisions made by programmers and analysts are recorded in a project database. Unresolved problems are also recorded, and resources for their resolution are allocated by management according to the overall development strategy. This decision structure is linked to the products affected by the relevant decisions and provides a process-oriented view of the resulting system. Software maintenance uses this decision view of the system to understand the rationale behind the decisions affecting the part of the system to be modified. The relationships between decisions help assess the impact of changing one or more decisions. The authors describe D-HyperCase, a prototype decision-based hypermedia system and give results of applying the DBSD approach during its development