Empirical Comparison of Comprehensibility of Requirement Specification Techniques based on Natural Languages and Activity Diagrams

Bogumila Hnatkowska, Mateusz Grzegorczyn

2012

Abstract

Understandability belongs to the most important features of good quality software requirement specification (SRS) . There exist plenty notations used for defining SRS, but still natural language (NL) belongs to the most pop-ular. The specification written is NL could suffer from ambiguity, however it can be read by everybody without specific training. To eliminate, even partially, the drawbacks mentioned previously, SRS is written according to well defined guidelines and with the use of templates, e.g. use-case model consisting of a use-case diagram with a set of use-case detailed descriptions. Use-case descriptions are defined in NL or with dynamic diagrams, e.g. activity diagrams. This paper presents a controlled experiment which aimed at comparison of comprehensibility of techniques based on natural language and activity diagrams. The results of the experiment confirmed that formal notation is less ambiguous. Additionally, if a reader is accustomed to it, reading activity diagram not necessarily is time consuming.

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Paper Citation


in Harvard Style

Hnatkowska B. and Grzegorczyn M. (2012). Empirical Comparison of Comprehensibility of Requirement Specification Techniques based on Natural Languages and Activity Diagrams . In Proceedings of the 10th International Workshop on Modelling, Simulation, Verification and Validation of Enterprise Information Systems and 1st International Workshop on Web Intelligence - Volume 1: MSVVEIS, (ICEIS 2012) ISBN 978-989-8565-14-3, pages 27-36. DOI: 10.5220/0004099100270036


in Bibtex Style

@conference{msvveis12,
author={Bogumila Hnatkowska and Mateusz Grzegorczyn},
title={Empirical Comparison of Comprehensibility of Requirement Specification Techniques based on Natural Languages and Activity Diagrams},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 10th International Workshop on Modelling, Simulation, Verification and Validation of Enterprise Information Systems and 1st International Workshop on Web Intelligence - Volume 1: MSVVEIS, (ICEIS 2012)},
year={2012},
pages={27-36},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0004099100270036},
isbn={978-989-8565-14-3},
}


in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the 10th International Workshop on Modelling, Simulation, Verification and Validation of Enterprise Information Systems and 1st International Workshop on Web Intelligence - Volume 1: MSVVEIS, (ICEIS 2012)
TI - Empirical Comparison of Comprehensibility of Requirement Specification Techniques based on Natural Languages and Activity Diagrams
SN - 978-989-8565-14-3
AU - Hnatkowska B.
AU - Grzegorczyn M.
PY - 2012
SP - 27
EP - 36
DO - 10.5220/0004099100270036