Experimental Evaluation of the Stimulus Response Requirements Specification Notation

In order to transfer a new tool or technique to industry, project managers need some kind of an evaluation to determine if its benefits outweigh the costs. There are several ways to evaluate a new tool or technique including cases studies, pilot projects, or experiments. In this work, an experimental evaluation is selected to objectively evaluate a new, formal requirements specification notation, Stimulus Response Requirements Specification (SRRS). The SRRS notation is designed for the specification of large, software intensive systems with complex data requirements. An overview of the experimental design, results, and the conclusions based on the experimental data are presented in this paper. The results are very encouraging and indicate the SRRS notation is a cost effective way to develop requirement specifications. The time to write, review, and correct the specification is reduced as are the number of defects detected in a peer review process. There is, however, an increase in the training time for the authors.