An Exploratory Study of Forces and Frictions affecting Large-Scale Model-Driven Development

In this paper, we investigate model-driven engineering, reporting on an exploratory case-study conducted at a large automotive company. The study consisted of interviews with 20 engineers and managers working in different roles. We found that, in the context of a large organization, contextual forces dominate the cognitive issues of using model-driven technology. The four forces we identified that are likely independent of the particular abstractions chosen as the basis of software development are the need for diffing in software product lines, the needs for problem-specific languages and types, the need for live modeling in exploratory activities, and the need for point-to-point traceability between artifacts. We also identified triggers of accidental complexity, which we refer to as points of friction introduced by languages and tools. Examples of the friction points identified are insufficient support for model diffing, point-to-point traceability, and model changes at runtime.Comment: To appear in proceedings of MODELS 2012, LNCS Springe

Developing product configurators for use in a multinational industrial goods company

Thesis (M.B.A.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management; and, (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering; in conjunction with the Leaders for Global Operations Program at MIT, 2013.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 83-84).As multinational industrial goods companies (MNCs) selling low-volume high-complexity products move into markets across the globe, they develop an operations strategy to provide a product tailored to local markets, often also engineered and manufactured in that local market. As MNCs seek to provide more customization to their customers, they face issues with the resulting complexity of operations, leading them to pursue mass customization, i.e. providing variety at low cost through configurable products. An important step in this product strategy is the introduction of product configurators, i.e. software tools that permit the automatic or semiautomatic configuration and pricing of product variants. Through streamlining the specification and bidding process, product configurators lower process time and therefore also lower costs in both sales and engineering functions. However, difficulties arise in developing a product configurator for a global company operating in many different localized markets. This study develops a framework for multinational companies to first evaluate the needs of their overseas divisions for a product configurator and second identify the gaps between the global and local product configuration and pricing. The objective of the framework is to provide a unified, centrally managed product configurator that provides the ability to tailor product options to specific local needs. A case study of a power electronics multinational with 9 overseas locations is performed. Interviews of key stakeholders in the head office and in the overseas division provide preliminary indication of differing product configurator design requirements from country to country. A deep dive is performed using the framework into two of its oversea divisions, Canada and Brazil. The study reveals key differences in the product feature requirements, in costing products due to local labor costs, part costs and import taxes, in the pricing process due to margin structures and sales incentives and in usage patterns due to language, local technical terminology and collaboration modes between sales and engineering. Using survey techniques, prioritization of the configurator functionality requirements is determined. Combined with an organizational analysis of the company, an integrated implementation plan is developed to permit identification of solutions in conjunction with roll-out to the international organization.by Alicia Lenis.S.M.M.B.A

Using NLP tools in the specification phase

The software quality control is one of the main topics in the Software Engineering area. To put the effort in the quality control during the specification phase leads us to detect possible mistakes in an early steps and, easily, to correct them before the design and implementation steps start. In this framework the goal of SAREL system, a knowledge-based system, is twofold. On one hand, to help software engineers in the creation of quality Software Requirements Specifications. On the other hand, to analyze the correspondence between two different conceptual representations associated with two different Software Requirements Specification documents. For the first goal, a set of NLP and Knowledge management tools is applied to obtain a conceptual representation that can be validated and managed by the software engineer. For the second goal we have established some correspondence measures in order to get a comparison between two conceptual representations. This information will be useful during the interaction.Postprint (published version

The Synonym management process in SAREL

The specification phase is one of the most important and least supported parts of the software development process. The SAREL system has been conceived as a knowledge-based tool to improve the specification phase. The purpose of SAREL (Assistance System for Writing Software Specifications in Natural Language) is to assist engineers in the creation of software specifications written in Natural Language (NL). These documents are divided into several parts. We can distinguish the Introduction and the Overall Description as parts that should be used in the Knowledge Base construction. The information contained in the Specific Requirements Section corresponds to the information represented in the Requirements Base. In order to obtain high-quality software requirements specification the writing norms that define the linguistic restrictions required and the software engineering constraints related to the quality factors have been taken into account. One of the controls performed is the lexical analysis that verifies the words belong to the application domain lexicon which consists of the Required and the Extended lexicon. In this sense a synonym management process is needed in order to get a quality software specification. The aim of this paper is to present the synonym management process performed during the Knowledge Base construction. Such process makes use of the Spanish Wordnet developed inside the Eurowordnet project. This process generates both the Required lexicon and the Extended lexicon that will be used during the Requirements Base construction.Postprint (published version