LLM-based Class Diagram Derivation from User Stories with Chain-of-Thought Promptings

In agile requirements engineering, user stories are the primary means of capturing project requirements. However, deriving conceptual models, such as class diagrams, from user stories requires significant manual effort. This paper explores the potential of leveraging Large Language Models (LLMs) and a tailored Chain-of- Thought (CoT) prompting technique to automate this task. We conducted a comprehensive preliminary study to investigate different prompting techniques applied to the task. The study involved comparing LLM-based approaches with guided and unguided human extraction to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed LLM-based techniques. Our findings demonstrate that LLM-based approaches, particularly when combined with well-crafted few-shot prompts, outperform guided human extraction in identifying classes. However, we also identified areas of suboptimal performance through qualitative analysis. The proposed CoT prompting technique offers a promising pathway to automate the derivation of class diagrams in agile projects, reducing the reliance on manual effort. Our study contributes valuable insights and directions for future research in this field. © 2024 IEEE.