On the Benefits of using Dedicated Models in Validation Processes for Behavioral Specifications

Background: In model-based engineering models need to be regularly validated by manual assessment. Therefore, review processes have established. This commonly means that a visual inspection of the respective models is conducted. Aims: In this paper, we report a study that aims at investigating whether automatically generated review models can aid the manual review of model-based specifications. We investigate this for the case of embedded systems' functional design. Method: For that purpose, we compared the manual review of the functional design with the review of an automatically generated review model. In this paper, we report on a controlled experiment to compare effectiveness, efficiency, user confidence, and subjective supportiveness of both review artifacts. Results: The experiment results show that the use of the review model as review artifact for the functional design is significantly more effective, leads to a significantly higher user confidence in decision making and is valued as significantly more supportive than the review of the original functional design. Conclusions: Our experiment provides evidences that reviewing a generated review model instead of the original model-based specification of the functional design increases the quality of the reviews. Our findings also indicate that the use of generated review models have the potential to improve the review of model-based specifications in general.