Changes and Issues

If your work in managing a project identifies issues, defects or required changes in the model rather than internal to a single element, you can represent these using Change or Issue (Defect) elements as structured comments with which you can track and manage the problems.

You can also define any specific work to be done in researching or resolving the problem using Task elements, and assign resources to these or directly to the Change or Issue elements internally, in Resource Allocation, or externally as Actors.

The use of maintenance elements provides a broad scope for managing changes and issues, providing the facility to fully define the issue and its resolution with linked documents, both internal and external Notes, and composite structure diagrams including Interaction and Activity diagrams.

You can create Change and Issue elements in various UML diagrams (especially Maintenance diagrams) and connect them using Realization, Dependency, Aggregation and other relationships to show what model elements each issue affects and how each is resolved. Within the element Properties dialog for Changes and Issues you can identify the issue as the element name and record relevant management details, such as owner and dates.

A useful tool in managing issues and changes is the Relationship Matrix, in which you might - for example - link staff (Actors) through Realization connectors to Issues. Each highlighted square in the Matrix indicates the responsibility of a staff member to work on or correct a named Issue

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