A Rapid Development Process with UML

Since "design-oriented" life-cycles came to their maturity, dramatic changes have been introduced as far as programming tools and computer hardware are concerned. Such changes made it possible to develop applications focusing on refactoring rather than on analysis and design. The underlying hypothesis is that by adopting suitable tools and target languages, refactoring would possibly cost less than the overhead introduced by modern A&D techniques. Recently, extreme programming has been proposed as an alternative to a "design-oriented" life-cycle.In this paper we describe a software application developed using a software life-cycle that basically follows the guidelines suggested by extreme programming. Such an approach requires highly expressive programming languages and powerful CASE tools. UML has been selected as the underlying modeling language throughout the whole process, for it incorporates well-known diagrams for describing a software application from different perspectives. Smalltalk has been selected as target language, as it allows fast prototyping and early delivery. We claim that, for small and medium-sized projects, a life-cycle based on refactoring and supported by suitable languages and tools allows team productivity to be greatly enhanced.