An Investigation into the State of the Practice of CASE Tool Integration

In the second half of 1992 a team of the SEI CASE Environments Project conducted a study into the state of the practice with respect to the operational use of integrated Computer-Aided Software Engineering (CASE) tools. After many false starts, we interviewed a number of examples of large organizations with integrated CASE tools in operational use on software development projects. Compared to the state of the art described in much of the literature, what was found might be considered modest. Compared to industry norms, it was quite impressive, representing significant commitment, ingenuity, and significant attention to end user needs. This report details our observations and analyzes the current state of the practice of CASE tool integration as revealed by our study. It also speculates on reasons for the modest state of the practice.