New Graphical Software Tool for Creating Cause-Effect Graph Specifications

Abstract

Cause-effect graphing is a commonly used black-box technique with many applications in practice. It is important to be able to create accurate cause-effect graph specifications from system requirements before converting them to test case tables used for black-box testing. In this paper, a new graphical software tool for creating cause-effect graph specifications is presented. The tool uses standardized graphical notation for describing different types of nodes, logical relations and constraints, resulting in a visual representation of the desired cause-effect graph which can be exported for later usage and imported in the tool. The purpose of this work is to make the cause-effect graph specification process easier for users in order to solve some of the problems which arise due to the insufficient amount of understanding of cause-effect graph elements. The proposed tool was successfully used for creating cause-effect graph specifications for small, medium and large graphs. It was also successfully used for performing different types of tasks by users without any prior knowledge of the functionalities of the tool, indicating that the tool is easy to use, helpful and intuitive. The results indicate that the usage of standardized notation is easier to understand than nonstandardized approaches from other tools. Index terms-software quality, black-box testing, cause-effect graph, graphical software tool.