Software Engineering

11.2 
Behavioral analysis
Behavioral analysis involves a set of tasks that are intended to fully explore the 
functional solution space. The objective is to describe how the software product 
must respond to user inputs or computing environment state change or failure con-
ditions. Behavioral analysis tasks construct functional design models of data pro-
cessing transactions. The intent is to explicitly design how each transaction will be 
conducted, including any possible error condition or computing environment failure 
or degraded mode of operation.
The behavior model depicts how a complex function will be executed. The 
behavior of the software product must be specified in sufficient detail to unam-
biguously express how each function will be performed to enable the operational 
process to be accomplished. The behavior modeling technique may produce static 
(nonexecutable) or dynamic (executable) models. Dynamic models are preferred 
since they provide an analytical verification of the design adequacy and may be 
used to support trade-off analysis. Therefore, the behavior model must address the 
following elements: