in Proceedings of the 16th Intern. Symposium of the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE'06), Orlando, FL, USA, Jul 2006. The FAR Approach – Functional Analysis/Allocation and Requirements Flowdown Using Use Case Realizations Magnus Eriksson1,2, Kjell Borg1, Jürgen Börstler2 1BAE Systems Hägglunds AB 2Umeå University SE-891 82 Örnsköldsvik SE-901 87 Umeå Sweden Sweden {magnus.eriksson, kjell.borg}@baesystems.se {magnuse, jubo}@cs.umu.se Copyright © 2006 by Magnus Eriksson, Kjell Borg and Jürgen Börstler. Published and used by INCOSE with permission. Abstract. This paper describes a use case driven approach for functional analysis/allocation and requirements flowdown. The approach utilizes use cases and use case realizations for functional architecture modeling, which in turn form the basis for design synthesis and requirements flowdown. We refer to this approach as the FAR (Functional Architecture by use case Realizations) approach. The FAR approach is currently applied in several large-scale defense projects within BAE Systems Hägglunds AB and the experience so far is quite positive. The approach is illustrated throughout the paper using the well known Automatic Teller Machine (ATM) example. INTRODUCTION Organizations developing software intensive defense systems, for example vehicles, are today faced with a number of challenges. These challenges are related to the characteristics of both the market place and the system domain. • Systems are growing ever more complex, consisting of tightly integrated mechanical, electrical/electronic and software components. • Systems have very long life spans, typically 30 years or longer. • Due to reduced acquisition budgets, these systems are often developed in relatively short series; ranging from only a few to several hundred units. Furthermore, they are often part of a product line of related systems; however, they are always customized for specific customer needs. For an organization to be competitive in a market like this, it is important to achieve effective development as well as effective maintenance. This makes it necessary to avoid multiple implementations of the same functionality and to achieve high levels of reuse. It is furthermore very important that the different engineering disciplines involved in development can communicate effectively. Development processes should be tightly integrated to ensure that all disciplines are working towards a common goal. Shortcomings of Traditional Systems Engineering. We believe that systems engineering is a key function in any organization trying to address such complexity. Unfortunately, according to our experience, traditional systems engineering methods and tools suffer from two major shortcomings regarding these challenges: 1. Traditional systems engineering typically utilizes classical structured analysis techniques (Lykins, 2000). In our opinion, these techniques provide little support for achieving high levels of reuse. 2. Traditional systems engineering utilizes modeling techniques, that are not commonly known to non-technical stakeholders or even other engineering disciplines, like for example IDEFØ diagrams (NIST, 1993). This is a problem, since systems engineering is the means by which stakeholder needs are translated and communicated to other engineering disciplines. An interesting approach to address the first shortcoming could be to adopt an object oriented approach, like for example the Object Oriented Systems Engineering Method - OOSEM (Lykins, 2000). Although object orientation provides stronger means than structured analysis for achieving high levels of reuse it does not resolve the second shortcoming. Since most approaches are based on the UML (OMG, 2005), they are as unsuitable for our needs as structured analysis. Adopting an UML based approach would certainly ease communications with the software engineering team, but hardly with other stakeholders, like customers, end users, marketing, mechanical and electrical engineering, etc. Our experience has however shown that one object oriented technique, namely use case modeling (Adolph, 2003), produces outputs that can be easily communicated to both non- technical stakeholders and other engineering disciplines. We therefore propose a use case driven systems engineering method to address the shortcomings of traditional systems engineering mentioned above. Use Case Modeling. Use case modeling is a functional decomposition technique that provides a semi-formal framework for structuring the system functionality into user goals. These user goals are further specified by a number of scenarios describing the interaction between a system and its actors (users and environment) with the purpose of achieving these goals. The concept of use cases has today become a widely accepted and used requirements modeling technique in the software engineering community. Use case modeling has also started to gain some acceptance within the systems engineering community. At the 2005 INCOSE symposium, for example, Daniels et al. discuss how system level requirements can be derived from use case scenarios (Daniels, 2005). We have however not yet been able to find a systems engineering approach in the literature where use cases are an integral part of the systems engineering process, rather than a simple tool for requirements capture. We have therefore developed a method for functional analysis/allocation and requirements flowdown that utilizes use cases and use case realizations (Kruchten, 2000). We refer to this method as the FAR (Functional Architecture by use case Realizations) approach. Functional Analysis and Allocation. The purpose of the functional analysis and allocation activity is to clearly describe the system functionality, divide functions into sub-functions and to allocate them appropriately to subsystems (INCOSE, 2004). As shown in Figure 1, functional analysis and allocation is based on input provided by requirements analysis, which also receives feedback via the requirements loop from functional analysis and allocation. Furthermore, functional analysis and allocation also provides input to design synthesis and receives feedback through the design loop. Requirements Flowdown. After specifying a system’s functional and physical architecture and allocating system level requirements to subsystems, the next step of the systems engineering process is commonly referred to as Requirements flowdown. The flowdown activity consists of deriving requirements specifications for each element of the systems architecture based on the allocated system requirements (Dorfman, 1997). Contributions. The main contributions of this paper is a description of how use cases and use case realizations can be utilized for functional architectural modeling and thereby form the basis for system design synthesis and requirements flowdown. The FAR approach is illustrated throughout the paper using the well known Automatic Teller Machine (ATM) example. System Requirements Analysis Analysis and Control Requirements Loop Process Process Input Functional Output Analysis & Allocation Design Loop Design Verification Synthesis Figure 1. Overview of the systems engineering process (DoD, 2001). THE FAR APPROACH Being a use case driven method, FAR closes the requirements loop by producing a use case model as output of the functional analysis and allocation function. As shown in Figure 2, this use case model consists of a survey of all use cases included in the system and detailed specifications of each use case within that survey. Furthermore, in addition to a traditional use case model, the FAR approach also produces a Functional Breakdown Structure (FBS). The purpose of this FBS is to provide a good overview of the system functionality, which we feel is missing in traditional use case models. The produced use case model also serves as input to the Design Synthesis, as shown in Figure 2, and is thereby also part of the design loop shown in Figure 1. The feedback loop from Design Synthesis to Functional Analysis and Allocation includes a description of the physical architecture of the system. This Physical Architecture Description (PAD) includes, for example, brief descriptions of all defined subsystems. However, details regarding development of this PAD is not within the scope of this paper and will therefore not be further discussed. As shown in Figure 2, the physical architecture enters the functional analysis and allocation function as a control. This control triggers allocations which in turn will result in what we refer to as the Functional Architecture Description (FAD) and a Requirements Allocation Sheet (RAS). A FAD is a collection of all use case realizations for a system, where a use case realization is a description of how different subsystems collaborate to solve a specific use case (Kruchten, 2000). As shown in Figure 2, the FAD and the RAS are input to the requirements flowdown activity, which produce requirements specifications for different subsystems as output. Organizational Procedures, System Concept, Legacy System Design, System Context Diagram GFE, Constraints, Etc. Subsystem Concept Functional Breakdown Structure (FBS) Use Case Model Survey Output of Req. Perform Analysis Functional Use Case Specifications Analysis and Allocation Perform Physical Architecture Description (PAD) Design Synthesis Functional Architecture Description (FAD) Requirements Allocation Sheet (RAS) Subsystem Requirements Perform Requirements Subsystem Context Diagrams Flowdown Systems Engineering SW / Electrical