A survey of software development practices in the New Zealand software industry

We report on the software development techniques used in the New Zealand software industry, paying particular attention to requirements gathering. We surveyed a selection of software companies with a general questionnaire and then conducted in-depth interviews with four companies. Our results show a wide variety in the kinds of companies undertaking software development, employing a wide range of software development techniques. Although our data are not sufficiently detailed to draw statistically significant conclusions, it appears that larger software development groups typically have more well-defined software development processes, spend proportionally more time on requirements gathering, and follow more rigorous testing regimes

Designing precise and flexible graphical modelling languages for software development

Model-driven approaches to software development involve building computerized models of software and the environment in which it is intended to operate. This thesis offers a selection of the author’s work over the last three decades that addresses the design of precise and flexible graphical modelling languages for use in model-driven software development. The primary contributions of this work are: • Syntropy: the first published object-oriented analysis and design (OOAD) method to fully integrate formal and graphical modelling techniques. • The creation of the Object Constraint Language (OCL) and its integration into the Unified Modeling Language (UML) specification. • The identification of requirements and mechanisms for increasing the flexibility of the UML specification. • The design and implementation of tools for implementing graphical Domain Specific Languages (DSLs). The starting point was the author’s experience with formal specification techniques contrasted with the lack of precision of published object-oriented analysis and design methods. This led to a desire to fully integrate these two topics – formal specification and object-orientation - into a coherent discipline. The Syntropy approach, created in 1994 by this author and John Daniels, was the first published complete attempt to do this. Much of the author’s subsequent published work concerns the Unified Modeling Language (UML). UML represented a welcome unification of earlier OOAD approaches, but suffered badly from inflexibility and lack of precision. A significant part of the work included in this thesis addresses the drawbacks of the UML and proposes improvements to the precision of its definition, including through the invention of Object Constraint Language (OCL) and its incorporation into the UML specification, and the consideration of UML as source material for the definition of Domain Specific Languages (DSLs). Several of the author’s published works in this thesis concern mechanisms for the creation of DSLs, both within a UML framework and separately

The Real World Software Process

The industry-wide demand for rapid development in concert with greater process maturity has seen many software development firms adopt tightly structured iterative processes. While a number of commercial vendors offer suitable process infrastructure and tool support, the cost of licensing, configuration and staff training may be prohibitive for the small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) which dominate the Asia-Pacific software industry. This work addresses these problems through the introduction of the Real World Software Process (RWSP), a freely available, Web-based iterative scheme designed specifically for small teams and organisations. RWSP provides a detailed process description, high quality document templates - including code review and inspection guidelines - and the integrated tutorial support necessary for successful usage by inexperienced developers and teams. In particular it is intended that the process be readily usable by software houses which at present do not follow a formal process, and that the free RWSP process infrastructure should be a vehicle for improving industry standards

Managing Evolutionary Method Engineering by Method Rationale

This paper explores how to integrate formal meta-models with an informal method rationale to support evolutionary (continuous) method development. While the former provides an exact and computer-executable specification of a method, the latter enables concurrent learning, expansion, and refinement of method use (instances of meta-models) and meta-models (evolution of method specifications). We explain the need for method rationale by observing the criticality of evolving method knowledge in helping software organizations to learn, as well as by the recurrent failure to introduce rigid and stable methods. Like a design rationale, a method rationale establishes a systematic and organized trace of method evolution. Method rationale is located at two levels of type-instance hierarchy depending on its type of use and the scope of the changes traced. A method construction rationale garners a history of method knowledge evolution as part of the method engineering process, which designs and adapts the method to a given organizational context. A method use rationale maintains knowledge of concrete use contexts and their history and justifies further method deployment in alternative contexts, reveals limitations in its past use, and enables sharing of method use experience. The paper suggests how a method rationale helps share knowledge of methods between method users and engineers, explores how method engineers coordinate the evolution of the existing method base through it, and suggests ways to improve learning through method rationale

Construction of a taxonomy for requirements engineering commercial-off-the-shelf components

This article presents a procedure for constructing a taxonomy of COTS products in the field of Requirements Engineering (RE). The taxonomy and the obtained information reach transcendental benefits to the selection of systems and tools that aid to RE-related actors to simplify and facilitate their work. This taxonomy is performed by means of a goal-oriented methodology inspired in GBRAM (Goal-Based Requirements Analysis Method), called GBTCM (Goal-Based Taxonomy Construction Method), that provides a guide to analyze sources of information and modeling requirements and domains, as well as gathering and organizing the knowledge in any segment of the COTS market. GBTCM claims to promote the use of standards and the reuse of requirements in order to support different processes of selection and integration of components.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Efficiency improvement of product definition and verification through Product Lifecycle Management

The correct and complete geometrical definition of a product is nowadays a critical activity for most companies. To solve this problem, ISO has launched the GPS, Geometrical Product Specifications and Verification, with the goal of consistently and completely describe the geometric characteristics of the products. With this project, it is possible to define a language of communication between the various stages of the product lifecycle based on "operators": these are an ordered set of mathematical operations used for the definition of the products. However, these theoretical and mathematical concepts require a level of detail and completeness of the information hardly used in usual industrial activities. Consequently in industrial practice the definition and verification of products appears to be a slow process, error-prone and difficult to control. Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) is the activity of managing the company's products throughout their lifecycle in the most efficient way. PLM describes the engineering aspects of the products, ensuring the integrity of product definition, the automatic update of the product information and then aiding the product to fulfil with international standards. Despite all these benefits, the concepts of PLM are not yet fully understood in industry and they are difficult to implement for SME's. A first objective of this research is to develop a model to depict and understand processes. This representation is used as a tool during the application of a case study of a whole set of a GPS standards for one type of tolerance. This procedure allows the introduction of the GPS principles and facilitates its implementation within a PLM process. Until now, PLM is presented on isolated aspects without the necessary holistic approach. Furthermore, industry needs people able to operate in PLM context, professional profiles that are not common on the market. There is therefore an educational problem; besides the technical knowledge, the new profile of engineers must be also familiar with the PLM philosophy and instruments to work effectively in a team. With the aim of solving this problem, this thesis presents a PLM solution that gives the guidelines for a correct understanding of these topic

CMMI – AN ANSWER TO THE SOFTWARE CRISIS?

International audienceAs regularly mentioned in the current "software crisis", the software must be developed while the system definition is not yet frozen. In 2001, EADS SPACE Transportation started a CMM approach to improve its software development process. But even if the projects became more deterministic, the software developments still remained depending on system evolutions, and continued to appear very costly. So it was decided to use the CMMI maturity model, adapted to our industrial domain and now applied by many companies. We really think that the CMMI approach allows to improve both the system and software engineering processes:-The CMMI management processes are mandatory to efficiently plan, control and manage complex projects.-The technical processes must contribute to well organize the project. The CMMI project has just begun, so the expected benefits and savings are not yet visible. In parallel, other improvements are also expected from the software R&D activities presented in the paper. The paper will present:-an overview of the "software crisis",-a presentation of SW-CMM and CMMI,-The main improvements achieved through the SW-CMM project and expected from the CMMI project,-The software R&D roadmap at EADS SPACE Transportation