Knowledge-based systems and NASA's software support environment

A proposed role for knowledge-based systems within NASA's Software Support Environment (SSE) is described. The SSE is chartered to support all software development for the Space Station Freedom Program (SSFP). This includes support for development of knowledge-based systems and the integration of these systems with conventional software systems. In addition to the support of development of knowledge-based systems, various software development functions provided by the SSE will utilize knowledge-based systems technology

Description of research interests and current work related to automating software design

Enclosed is a list of selected and recent publications. Most of these publications concern applied research in the areas of software engineering and human-computer interaction. It is felt that domain-specific knowledge plays a major role in software development. Additionally, it is believed that improvements in the general software development process (e.g., object-oriented approaches) will have to be combined with the use of large domain-specific knowledge bases

Understanding the role of knowledge management in software development: a case study in very small companies

Software and systems engineering is distinct from other forms of engineering as it deals with an intangible product, where the progress in construction is not explicitly visible and team members often rely on the docu- mentation of others to follow and review progress. Furthermore unlike traditional engineering disciplines, there is no single standardized unified process. The role of knowledge management in the software engineering literature is becoming more evident, as the software development activity is essentially a human knowledge intensive activity and is seen by many as a key factor. This paper discusses the role of software development knowledge management within software development process and specifically how software development knowledge is managed in software development in order to support software process improvement and the role of knowledge management in this. The authors present the results of a study of knowledge management process practices in very small software companies and discusses these under the major identified issues of: Communication; Learning and sharing; Documentation and Knowledge management process and com- mitment. The findings in this study give an insight towards knowledge management practices as they relate to software development process practices in very small companies and the important factors that must be considered to preserve knowledge and quality software

A Systematic Literature Review of The Role of Ontology in Modeling Knowledge in Software Development Processes

Ontologies in software development are explained as showing the properties of a subject area and how they are related to each other by defining a set of concepts and categories that represent the subject. It is used to determine the ambiguity in the software requirements specification. Although claimed to be beneficial, the software development communities are still unfamiliar with the role of Ontology in modeling knowledge in software development processes. Moreover, not much has been known about the role of Ontology in software engineering processes. Our goal is to map and explain the evidence about the role of Ontology in Modelling Knowledge and the challenge faced by the software engineering team to understand how far ontology can help them determine the ambiguity in modeling and software development processes. We conducted a systematic review of the literature published between 2012 and 2021 and identified 150 papers that discuss the role of ontology in modeling knowledge in software development processes. We formulated and applied specific inclusion and exclusion criteria in two rounds to determine the most relevant studies for our research goal. The review identified 22 practices that explain ontologies' primary role in software development processes. However, our findings suggest ontology's role in software engineering as a research context needs additional attention. A more empirical result is required to understand better the role of ontology in modeling knowledge in software development with non-functional requirements and self-organizing teams

Rationale in Development Chat Messages: An Exploratory Study

Chat messages of development teams play an increasingly significant role in software development, having replaced emails in some cases. Chat messages contain information about discussed issues, considered alternatives and argumentation leading to the decisions made during software development. These elements, defined as rationale, are invaluable during software evolution for documenting and reusing development knowledge. Rationale is also essential for coping with changes and for effective maintenance of the software system. However, exploiting the rationale hidden in the chat messages is challenging due to the high volume of unstructured messages covering a wide range of topics. This work presents the results of an exploratory study examining the frequency of rationale in chat messages, the completeness of the available rationale and the potential of automatic techniques for rationale extraction. For this purpose, we apply content analysis and machine learning techniques on more than 8,700 chat messages from three software development projects. Our results show that chat messages are a rich source of rationale and that machine learning is a promising technique for detecting rationale and identifying different rationale elements.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures. The 14th International Conference on Mining Software Repositories (MSR'17

Growth, Integration and Spillovers in the Central and East European Software Industry

This paper explores growth and competitive advantage in CEE software firms; it looks at the role of strategic partnerships and industry (spillover) effects. The empirical analysis is based on survey data from 224 software firms from six CEE countries (Bulgaria, Czech R, Estonia, Serbia, Slovenia, Romania). The results of the descriptive analysis are interpreted from the perspective of the role of capabilities in industrial development. The analysis shows that the patterns of growth are a mix of sector, region and sub--region specific determinants and show important national differences. This suggests that the CEE software industry cannot be considered as a homogenous phenomenon. There is no general tendency towards an expansion in exports; based on our sample only Romania is developing an export oriented software industry. Research shows that the CEE software industry is populated by young, dedicated, domestic firms, which are independent, and privately owned and which are mainly oriented towards localisation of software. They are strongly dependent for trade and production on alliances and strategic partnerships with foreign partners and a small share of technology based partnerships. There is an extensive process of industry upgrading underway, involving country and sub-region specific changes. The spillover effects are significant, through links with clients and intensive intra-industry knowledge transfer through high employment turnover and potentially high knowledge transfer from foreign to local projects. Differences between central and eastern Europe are strong in terms of degree of diversification of software supply, industrial upgrading and quality of demand. The pattern of software development in CEE differs from that in other emerging markets in the sense that it is domestic market oriented, but with an emerging export market for services. Its further growth and upgrading will be strongly dependent on the acquisition of organisational capabilities by local firms

Rationale Management Challenges in Requirements Engineering

Rationale and rationale management have been playing an increasingly prominent role in software system development mainly due to the knowledge demand during system evaluation, maintenance, and evolution, especially for large and complex systems. The rationale management for requirements engineering, as a commencing and critical phase in software development life cycle, is still under-exploited. In this paper, we first survey briefly the state-of-the-art on rationale employment and applications in requirements engineering. Secondly, we identify the challenges in integrating rationale management in requirements engineering activities in order to promote further investigations and define a research agenda on rationale management in requirements engineering.

Web-based knowledge management model for managing and sharing green knowledge of software development in community of practice

Emerging awareness of sustainability matters urge the people go for green computing as solution to the environmental problems. There were a lot of previous researches studied about hardware solution, and only few papers that focused on green software area. However, there is lacking of research that discusses about how to implement knowledge management method to manage the green knowledge of software development. As we know that software development is an important role in supporting the IT community, hence the unmanaged green knowledge of software development will lead to the problem of unable to meet both the environmental and business demands to the community. Therefore, this research will focus on proposing a model that applies web-based knowledge management system to manage and share the green knowledge of software development among the members of community of practice in software development environment