Requirements modeling constitutes one of the most important phases
of the systems development life cycle. Despite the proliferation
of methodologies and models for requirements analysis, empirical
work examining their relative efficacy is limited. This paper
presents an empirical examination of object-oriented and process-oriented
methodologies as applied to object-oriented and process-oriented
tasks. The conceptual basis of the research model is derived from
the theory of cognitive fit, which posits that superior problem-solving
performance will result when the problem-solving task and the
problem-solving tool emphasize the same type of information. Two
groups of subjects participated in an experiment that required
them to construct solutions to two requirements-modeling tasks,
one process-oriented and the other object-oriented. One group
employed the object-oriented tool while the other used the process-oriented
tool. As cognitive-fit theory predicted, superior performance
was observed when the process-oriented tool was applied to the
process-oriented task. For the object-oriented task, however,
the performance effects of cognitive fit require further investigation
since there was no difference in subject performance across the
two tools.
Key words and phrases: cognitive fit , human factors , object-oriented analysis , process-oriented analysis , requirements modeling