Patent ID: 7346888

Claim:
A system embodied in a computer readable medium for building software use cases and related state diagrams for business requirements, the system comprising: a business activity model identifying a plurality of business activities, the business activity model maintaining a hierarchical relationship between the plurality of business activities, wherein the hierarchical relationship includes a first number of levels, and wherein each of the plurality of business activities corresponds to one of the first number of levels; an integration component in communication with the business activity model, the integration component mapping the plurality of business activities from the hierarchical relationship to a software use case hierarchical relationship, wherein the software use case hierarchical relationship includes a plurality of software uses case levels, and wherein each of the plurality of business activities corresponds to one of the plurality of software use case levels; a modeling tool building a software use case based on a business requirement by selecting a first set of the plurality of business activities mapped to at least one of the plurality of software use case levels; a graphical user interface illustrating the software use case hierarchical relationship of at least some of the first set of selected business activities; and a state diagram component using the modeling tool, the state diagram component building a state activity diagram for at least a portion of the business requirement by selecting a second set of the plurality of business activities mapped to at least one of the plurality of software use case levels, wherein the state activity diagram displays the second set of selected business activities as a directionally linked sequence.