Bridging the gap between analysis and design using dependency diagrams

Requirements specifications often make use of a number of scenarios that are interrelated and that depend on each other in many ways. However, they are often treated separately, one by one. We propose a new type of diagrams, named dependency diagrams, which are able to illustrate the various kinds of relationships existing between scenarios. We make use of a scenario matrix for each scenario and we describe the transformation process of scenarios into state machines, based on the information in the scenario matrices, and that in the dependency diagrams. The result is a number of state machines that can be used for detailed design models and code can further be generated from them. Using our approach, we can bridge the gap between analysis and design and we can bring the developer one step closer to the implementation.