During the analysis stage of a typical information system development process, user requirements concerning system functionality and data are captured and specified using requirement specification techniques. Most of these specification techniques are graphical (semi-formal), i.e. they involve modelling. This paper presents a comparison of data requirement specification techniques in SSADM, which is a strong data-centred method, and the Unified Process, an object-oriented method. In particular, we investigated how data groups (entities and classes), their attributes and relationships are identified, specified and validated in both methods. Data requirement specification techniques used in both methods are then evaluated against a set of detailed criteria based on five requirement specification quality attributes. Both methods seem to have a similar informal approach to producing initial data requirement specifications, but they differ when these initial models are refined. The refinement in SSADM is more rigorous. Therefore, this paper makes a few recommendations for the Unified Process.

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Abstract. Our detailed investigation into various approaches to evaluate Information Systems Development methods has shown that numerous attempts to assess these methods only yield inconclusive and questionable results. There are two general trends as to how various criteria for evaluation are organised. There are relatively ad hoc lists of criteria for evaluation, and systematically organised frameworks, which generally provide more authoritative assessment results. However, the frameworks investigated are too generic and disproportionate in their emphases on certain parts of a method. Our initial motivation was the development of a framework for assessment of Component-based Software Development methods. However, in response to the shortcomings in existing approaches to method evaluation, a more generic framework that can be used to evaluate various types of Information Systems Development methods such as object-oriented methods, structured methods etc, is presented in this paper. The proposed framework defines three major elements of a method, namely, System Models, System Development Process and Software Architecture. This paper discusses the technique for evaluation of System Models and due to limitations on length of the paper, discussions on the evaluation of the other two elements are not included.

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