The "design or description" survey is part of my research for an MSc in Information Systems Management at Liverpool University.
This is a short interim report of my analysis of the responses recieved up to 1 May 2008. The survey had two aims:
1: To repeat part of Graeme Simsion’s research into whether data modeling is a descriptive task or a design task and to compare results.
2: To research the relationship between “design or description” and software development effectiveness.
I was motivated to conduct this research because it seems to me that if you ask someone "just to describe reality" then you are giving them quite a different task than if you ask them to "invent a reality". The critical point for developers is that the two paradigms lead to different tasks and different costs.
If you think that it is important for a developer to know which paradigm to follow, please feel free to post a comment in the "Surveys" section of the forum.
Thanks
Ken