Using an Issue-Based Hypertext System to Capture the Software Life-Cycle Process
Mark Lease, Mac Lively, John J. Leggett · New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia · 1990
Hypertext and object-oriented database technology offer significant possibilities for designing new software engineering environments which better represent the complex relationships between the many artifacts created during the life of a software system. These artifacts are composed of structured (machine understandable) and unstructured information. Hypertext systems can record both the structured and unstructured information of the software project and the linking relationships between both types of information. Issue-based information systems (also called argumentation systems) are special-purpose hypertext systems for capturing the issues and reasoning for decision making. The Issue-Based Experiment (IBE) system is an issue-based information system implemented on an object-oriented database platform. IBE was developed to research methods of capturing the life cycle of a software project in an issue-based information network. IBE is demonstrated to be useful in both the requirements development and system maintenance phases of the software life cycle. Several issues are discussed concerning the usability of issue-based information systems: maintaining a constant level of detail, scoping an Issue for placement in the issue network, and enforcing usage. IBE looks promising when integrated as part of a software development environment based on hypertext and object-oriented database technology.