Information technology - Guideline for the evaluation and selection of CASE tools

This International Standard gives guidelines for the evaluation and selection of CASE tools, covering a partial or full portion of the software engineering life cycle. It establishes processes and activities to be applied for the evaluation of CASE tools and selecting the most appropriate CASE tools from several candidates. These processes are generic, and organizations must tailor them to meet organizational needs. The CASE tool evaluation and selection processes should be viewed in the larger context of the organization's technology adoption process.

This International Standard provides the following:

a) guidance on identifying organizational requirements for CASE tools;

b) guidance on mapping those requirements to CASE tool characteristics to be evaluated;

c) a process for selecting the most appropriate CASE tool from several tools, based on measurements of the defined characteristics.

Primary users of this International Standard are organizations that intend to adopt CASE tools to support their software life cycle processes. CASE tool suppliers can also use this International Standard to describe characteristics of their CASE tools.

This International Standard is not intended to apply to:

a) software engineering frameworks whose purpose is to provide mechanisms for data, control and presentation integration;

b) general purpose tools (e.g. word processors, spreadsheets) which can be used in software engineering activities, nor CASE tools of very narrow scope or specific purpose (e.g. a compiler);

c) planning for the implementation of CASE tools within an organization (even though it is recognised that this is an important subject).

NOTE A user of this International Standard can make the best possible selection of a CASE tool and yet have no guarantee of a successful implementation. ISO/IEC TR 14471 Adoption of CASE Tools addresses this subject.

This International Standard contains a set of processes, activities, and tasks designed to be tailored. The tailoring process is the selection of applicable processes, activities and tasks.

Compliance with this International Standard is defined as the performance of the processes, activities, and tasks selected from this International Standard for the evaluation and selection project. Any organization imposing this International Standard as a condition of trade is responsible for specifying the minimum set of required processes, activities, and tasks which constitute compliance for a given application of this International Standard.