Abstract
Two experiments were conducted to compare the structured analysis and design (SA/SD) methodology with the conventional text-oriented analysis and design method. Two subject groups were involved in the experiments: one used the SA/SD methodology with a CASE environment, and the other used the text-oriented method without a CASE environment. In the first experiment, subjects were asked to perform the following three tasks — understand requirement specifications, detect specification errors, and identify change influences — to compare the effectiveness of the two methods for these tasks. The experiment showed that subjects using SA documents scored higher for data definition and interface, but they were prone to fail to understand specifications when relevant constituents were distributed over the documents. In the second experiment, to compare the effectiveness and reliability of the two methods for performing analysis and design, the two subject groups analyzed and designed a small transaction system. This experiment showed that the SA/SD method supported by a CASE environment is more efficient and reliable than the text-oriented method: the SA/SD method allows the subjects to formally specify more detailed requirements with the same effort, and produce less-error-prone requirements specification and module design documents.
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