Derivation of an integrated operational profile and use case model

Requirements engineering and software reliability engineering both involve model building related to the usage of the intended system; requirements models and test case models respectively are built. Use case modelling for requirements engineering and operational profile testing for software reliability engineering are techniques which are evolving into software engineering practice. In this paper, approaches towards integration of the use case model and the operational profile model are proposed. By integrating the derivation of the models, effort may be saved in both development and maintenance of software artifacts. Two integration approaches are presented, transformation and extension. It is concluded that the use case model structure can be transformed into an operational profile model adding the profile information. As a next step, the use case model can be extended to include the information necessary for the operational profile. Through both approaches, modelling and maintenance effort as well as risks for inconsistencies can be reduced. A positive spin-off effect is that quantitative information on usage frequencies is available in the requirements, enabling planning and prioritizing based on that information.