Towards a timed Markov process model of software development

The concept of a timed Markov model is introduced and proposed as a means of analyzing software development workflows. A simple model of a single researcher developing a new code for a high performance computer system is proposed, and data from a classroom experiment in programming a high performance system is fitted to the model. Categories and Subject Descriptor

Decision-Based Design Processes

This paper has been submitted to Journal of Mechanical Design.This paper studies engineering design decision-making. We show that the decision-based design framework, which seeks to find the most profitable design, can be separated into a sequence of subproblems. This separation is similar to decomposition but does not require a second-level coordination. We identify conditions under which this separation yields an exact solution and other conditions under which the error can be bounded. This separation provides a different way to solve the decision-based design framework and indicates a way to apply the principles of decision-based design to design processes

Describing Student Design Behavior

Open-ended design behavior can be characterized in part by the transitions a designer makes through steps in the design process. For example, a designer may define a problem, gather some information, develop several alternatives, then move back to reexamine the original problem definition before continuing with analysis. Each movement from step to step can be defined as a transition. Another way to describe design behavior is by the percentage of time spent in each of the design stages. These behaviors distinguish different types of processes that a designer might use. To study how engineering students approach and solve design problems, we collected data from seniors while they designed a playground for a fictional neighborhood. In this paper we will discuss the design behavior of these students by investigating the relationship between the percentage of time spent in various design stages, the number of transitions per unit time and how well the students were able to meet the constraints in the problem

SEPARATING PRODUCT FAMILY DESIGN OPTIMIZATION PROBLEMS

In order to improve productivity and reduce costs, manufacturing firms use product families to provide variety while maintaining economies of scale. In a competitive marketplace, designing a successful product family requires considering both customer preferences and the actions of other firms. This dissertation will conduct fundamental research on how to design products and product families in the presence of competition. We consider both single product and product family design problems. We use game theory to construct a model that includes the competition's product design decisions. We use separation, a problem decomposition approach, to replace complex optimization problems with simpler problems and find good solutions more efficiently. We study the well-known universal electric motor problem to demonstrate our approaches. This dissertation introduces the separation approach, optimizes product design with competition, models product family design under competition as a two-player zero-sum game, and models product family design with design and price competition as a two-player mixed-motive game. This dissertation formulates novel product design optimization problems and provides a new approach to solve these problems

Measurement and Analysis of Sequential Design Processes

this paper we describe the development of an analytical approach for evaluating sequential design process completion time and for determining the sensitivities of design time with respect to individual task durations and transition probabilities. Techniques are also detailed for collecting process metadata and calibrating a design process model. Example applications illustrate the use of the methodology in analyzing and improving software and hardware design processes. Categories and Subject Descriptors: J.6 [Computer Applications]: Computer-Aided Engineering - computer-aided design; K.3.2 [Computers and Education]: Computer and Information Science Education - self-assessmen