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Insights from the Defect Detection Process of IT Experts: A Case Study on Data Flow Diagrams

Authors:
Gul Tokdemir
Nergiz Ercil Cagiltay
Ozkan Kilic

Keywords: DFD; software design; diagrammatic reasoning; defect detection

Abstract:
Design diagrams employed in software development process deliver groups of associated information about the software to be developed. They enhance the perception of the software engineers helping them better understand the software system at various levels of system development process. Today’s fast-changing business environment necessitates the reflection of these changes into the operational software systems. Hence, the changes needed in software systems require software engineers to understand the system design diagrams and update them according to the changes. Therefore, it is very important for software engineers to understand and construct the design representations reflecting the software requirements correctly for the success of a software project. In the literature, there are not many studies conducted to better understand the behaviors of software engineers during designing and understanding these representations. Hence, the main aim of this study is to analyze the defect detection process of software engineers during their understanding of Data Flow Diagram (DFD) representations which are used to reveal system processes at different levels of abstraction and data flow requirements between them. Mainly, the question which type of defects can be detected easily is aimed to be answered. The results of this study show that missing information type defects (Missing Process-MP and Missing Dataflow-MD) are harder to detect than the incomplete or incorrect type (Incorrect or missing information-I) of defects.

Pages: 441 to 446

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2014

Publication date: October 12, 2014

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2308-4235

ISBN: 978-1-61208-367-4

Location: Nice, France

Dates: from October 12, 2014 to October 16, 2014