A distributed cooperative CASE environment for communications software

The authors propose a development process model and support environment for developing intelligent business communication services and other evolving communication services. To increase customer satisfaction and cut development time, they have developed a development process model, distributed concurrent development, in which multiple services are concurrently developed at a number of regionally distributed development centers. To support the process model, the ICAROS tool was developed, where developers and customers can cooperatively define service specifications with a visual object-oriented specification language. To smoothly migrate existing communication service to assets into intelligent network services, ICAROS supports the cyclic process model, which integrates forward engineering and reverse engineering, together with amplifier concept, which augments human ability on a groupware platform. Experimental use of ICAROS revealed the positive effect of proposed approach