Abstract
Software development tools are very important in software engineering. Although roles have been acknowledged and applied for many years in several areas related to software engineering, there is a lack of research on software development tools based on roles. Most significantly, there is no complete and consistent consideration of roles in all the phases of software development. Considering the increasing importance and applications of roles in software development, this paper intends to discuss the importance of roles in software engineering and that of role-based software development; review the literature relevant to role mechanisms in software engineering; propose and describe a role-based software process; and implement a prototype tool for developing complex software systems with the help of role mechanisms.