Software for Capturing Software-Design Rationale

Better Elicitation and Communication of Arguments Underlying Software Engineering (BECAUSE) is a computer program that records and codifies the rationale that underlies decisions made in the course of developing software. To minimize the additional sensory, cognitive, and motor demands upon the computer programmer and the time needed for the rationale-capture task, BECAUSE elicits spoken commentary, from the programmer, in regard to the specific software design or source code on which the programmer is currently working. Therefore, a microphone and speech-digitizing circuitry are used and BECAUSE incorporates speech-recognition software that processes digitized speech signals. BECAUSE also incorporates subprograms that perform the following functions: