Comparing Traditional and Web specific FIT Tables: a Controlled Experiment

Requirements and change requirements are usually expressed by means of natural language and free formats, such an approach is both subject to inaccuracies and prone to errors. Several researchers and practitioners advocate the use of formal and semi-formal notations to express and clarify (change) requirements with the aim of decreasing the number of software defects.In this paper we focus on the use of Fit tables, a table-based approach used to clarify (change) requirements and validate the software system, with thegoal of checking their usefulness in maintenance tasks within two different contexts: traditional software systems and Web systems. The main purpose of this work is to compare, by means the analysis of a questionnaire, Fit tables for traditional systems and Web specific Fit tables. Results indicate that Fit tables do not provide any significant help to Web developers, while they seem to be useful for traditional systems. The main reason appears to lie in the complexity of the Fit tables used for Web systems.