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Comprehensibility o...
Abstract
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- UML activity diagrams and state machines are both used for modeling system behavior from the user perspective and are frequently the basis for deriving system test cases. In practice, system test cases are often derived manually from UML activity diagrams or state machines. For this task, comprehensibility of respective models is essential and a relevant question for practice to support model selection and design, as well as subsequent test derivation. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to compare the comprehensibility of UML activity diagrams and state machines during manual test case derivation. We investigate the comprehensibility of UML activity diagrams and state machines in a controlled student experiment. Three measures for comprehensibility have been investigated: (1) the self-assessed comprehensibility, (2) the actual comprehensibility measured by the correctness of answers to comprehensibility questions, and (3) the number of errors made during test case derivation. The experiment was performed and internally replicated with overall 84 participants divided into three groups at two institutions. Our experiment indicates that activity diagrams are more comprehensible but also more error-prone with regard to manual test case derivation and discusses how these results can improve system modeling and test case design.
Subject headings
- NATURVETENSKAP -- Data- och informationsvetenskap -- Programvaruteknik (hsv//swe)
- NATURAL SCIENCES -- Computer and Information Sciences -- Software Engineering (hsv//eng)
Keyword
- UML models
- System testing
- System models
- Test design
- Model comprehensibility
- Controlled experiment
Publication and Content Type
- ref (subject category)
- art (subject category)
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