Bridging the Gap Between Structured Requirements and Object-Oriented Analysis and Design

A very large part of the business world today still uses traditional structured approach to the requirements gathering. On the technology side, extensive development has been-done in the area of Object-Oriented technologies that provides for productivity and quality through reusability, encourages team work and adopts a modular approach. Since the quality of the Object-Oriented applications has proven to be superior to the structured applications, especially in the area of maintenance, there has been a large demand for Object-Oriented applications. This leads to the situation where the requirements are structured, and the application needs lo be Object-Oriented. Subject Matter Experts (SMEs), with their knowledge of rhe system modeled, and analysts, with their knowledge of Object-Oriented paradigm, need to work together and reorganize the information fom the requirements analysis in the Object-Oriented fashion. This paper proposes and develops a methodology for the @an&ion. Emphasis is placed on preserving the knowledge captured in the requirements specification. The proposed methodology extends the existing Classes-Responsibilities-Collaborators (CRC) method and is tailored to be simple and understandable to SMEs, requiring minimal amount of training, yet power@ enough to enable the participants to think through the model in an Object-Orientedfashion.