Supporting design model refactoring for improving class responsibility assignment

Although a responsibility driven approach in object oriented analysis and design methodologies is promising, the assignment of the identified responsibilities to classes (simply, class responsibility assignment: CRA) is a crucial issue to achieve design of higher quality. The GRASP by Larman is a guideline for CRA and is being put into practice. However, since it is described in an informal way using a natural language, its successful usage greatly relies on designers' skills. This paper proposes a technique to represent GRASP formally and to automate appropriate CRA based on them. Our computerized tool automatically detects inappropriate CRA and suggests alternatives of appropriate CRAs to designers so that they can improve a CRA based on the suggested alternatives. We made preliminary experiments to show the usefulness of our tool.