Making CASE Work

Much of the attraction of Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE) tools lies in the sophistication of the technology and the claims made for the tools to solve major problems of quality and productivity in system development. The number of tools available has grown from a handful in the early 1980s to over 1000 today. Yet despite the promises, users have been slow to adopt the tools and benefits have been equally slow to appear. So what has gone wrong? Do the tools actually work, or are users failing to appreciate how to get the best out of them? What can we learn from the experience of those who have successfully introduced CASE? This paper looks at how far these claims for CASE are justified, and examines what organisations have to do to get the best, or indeed anything out of their use of CASE tools.