Enhancing Problem Frames with Scenarios and Histories in UML-based software development

Problem frames are an approach to requirements modelling that is gaining increasing attention and popularity, as it addresses the essential activity of understanding and describing the problem to be solved before undertaking the actual development phases. This paper reports a study concerning the possibility of enhancing the problem frames methodology with concepts derived from requirements modelling techniques based on scenarios and histories. The goal of this research is to make problem frames even more appealing to the software developers, who are generally familiar with the ideas underlying scenario-based modelling. The results presented here are encouraging: a well known problem, often used to illustrate problem frames (the sluice gate control) was studied with the help of scenarios, modelled by means of histories. Scenarios were also employed to support the merging of sub-problems, for addressing the frame concern issues, and for supporting design models. In all these activities the proposed approach proved helpful.