Towards developing a coherent research framework to measure CASE effectiveness

Computer-aided software engineering (CASE) technology has been offered as one approach to the crisis of application software development and maintenance backlogs. Although there are many purported benefits of CASE, empirical validation of these claims remains scant. One reason offered for the absence of quantitative research on CASE is the lack of rigorous and consistent definitions of CASE. In addition, there are no generally accepted standards to measure CASE effectiveness. The authors present a framework that defines CASE in terms of relationships of CASE tools to the systems development life cycle. The topic of measuring software development productivity as it relates to CASE is discussed, and suggestions for further research are presented