Assisting Novice Analysts in DEVELOPING QUALITY CONC EPTUAL MODELS WITH UML During the analysis phase of information systems

During the analysis phase of information systems development, systems analysts capture and represent systems requirements using conceptual models (such as entity-relationship diagrams, class diagrams, and use case diagrams). Considering the fact that the reported failures of a significant percentage of developed systems are linked to faulty requirements, it is extremely important for these analysts and critical to the system’s ultimate success to ensure the quality of the conceptual models they develop in the early phases of systems development. However, developing good-quality conceptual models is a challenge for many analysts. The models must support communications among end users and developers in defining and documenting systems requirements as faithfully as possible. The models’ effectiveness is influenced by the complex interactions among modeling constructs, task requirements, analysts’ own modeling experience and cognitive abilities, and interpreters’ experience with conceptual models [11]. Novice analysts developing conceptual models have more difficulty compared to experienced analysts in terms of domain-specific knowledge, problem structuring, and cognitive processes [9]. In addition, for novice analysts a lack of established validation procedures [10] makes conceptual modeling that much more difficult. Many systems analysts develop conceptual models by following the objectoriented approach in the modeling techniques of the Unified Modeling Language (UML) [6]. For example, UML provides 12 different types of diagrams for documenting a system from a variety of perspectives, and a typical systems analyst is expected to be familiar with many of them. Though UML is widely used, the UML diagrams are not highly rated by analysts in terms of usability [2]. Several practitioners offer recommendations and guidelines (such as [3, 4]), suggesting analysts employ commonly used patterns (such as [1, 5]) when using UML modeling techniques. However, typical novice analysts fail to derive maximum benefit from such assistance due to the cognitive overload involved in the recommendations and guidelines. Here, we present the results of an empirical study we conducted aimed at identifying the most typical set of errors frequently committed by novice systems analysts in four commonly used UML artifacts—use By Narasimha Bolloju and Felix S.K. Leung