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Requirements Before, Design After

The figure below depicts a UML sequence diagram of the behavior of a simulator during the execution of a user defined scenario. Before the code has been written and tested, one can interpret this diagram as a set of interrelated behavioral requirements imposed on the software. After the code has been written, it can be considered a design artifact that reflects what the code does at a higher level of abstraction than the code itself.

Interpretations like this give credence to Alan Davis’s brilliant quote:

One man’s requirement is another man’s design

Here’s a question. Do you think that specifying the behavior requirements in the diagram would have been best conveyed via a user story or a use case description?

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