ECHO: An Approach to Enhance Use Case Quality Exploiting Large Language Models.

UML use cases are commonly used in software engineering to specify the functional requirements of a system since they are an effective tool for interacting with stakeholders thanks to the use of natural languages. However, producing high-quality use cases can be challenging due to the lack of precise guidelines and suitable tools. This can lead to problems, e.g. inaccuracy and incompleteness, in the derived software artifacts and the final product. Recent advancements in Natural Language Processing and Large Language Models (LLMs) can provide the premises for developing tools supporting activities based on natural languages. In this paper, we propose ECHO, a novel approach for supporting software engineers in enhancing the quality of UML use cases using LLMs. Our approach consists of a co-prompt engineering approach and an iterative and interactive process with the LLM to improve the quality of use cases, based on practitioners’ feedback. To prove the feasibility of the proposal, we instantiated the approach using ChatGPT and performed a controlled experiment to assess its effectiveness by involving seven software engineering professionals. Three were part of the experimental group and used ECHO to improve the quality of the use cases. Three others were the control group and enhanced the quality of use cases manually. Finally, the last participant acted as an oracle, blind w.r.t. the groups, and evaluated the quality of the enhanced use cases, both qualitatively by means of a questionnaire, and quantitatively, by means of the Use Case Points metric. Results show that ECHO can effectively support software engineers to improve use cases’ quality thanks to the prompts suitably designed to interact with ChatGPT.