A Comparison of the Specification Methods

In this chapter, our goal is to provide a qualitative comparison of the specification methods introduced in this book. Our intention is not to rank methods in terms of quality or productivity. It would require a much larger sample of specifications, developed within a controlled experiment, to reach valid conclusions about quality or productivity. We have selected a set of attributes which describe several properties of specification methods. The definitions of these attributes are provided in the first section. In the second section, attributes are evaluated for each method; the results are described in a set of tables. The reader may then compare methods by comparing the values of their attributes.