Deferring elimination of design alternatives in object-oriented methods

While developing systems, software engineers generally have to deal with a large number of design alternatives. Current object-oriented methods aim to eliminate design alternatives whenever they are generated. Alternatives, however, should be eliminated only when sufficient information to take such a decision is available. Otherwise, alternatives have to be preserved to allow further refinements along the development process. Too early elimination of alternatives results in loss of information and excessive restriction of the design space. This paper aims to enhance the current object-oriented methods by modeling and controlling the design alternatives through the application of fuzzy-logic-based techniques. By using an example method, it is shown that the proposed approach increases the adaptability and reusability of design models. The method has been implemented and tested in our experimental CASE environment.