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Technical Reports
USC-CSE-94-505
Barry Boehm, Prasanta Bose, Gregory Toth, "Some Critical Success Factors for Knowledge Based Software Engineering Applications," Proceedings of the International Workshop on Software Engineering Education, Sorrento, Italy, May, 1994 (pdf)
In the Spring of 1993, the authors participated in a USC seminar course in Knowledge Based Software Engineering (KBSE) which involved the development of ten prototype KBSE applications. Evaluations of these prototype applications indicated a considerable range of relative utility to practicing software engineers. For potential discussion at the SE/ AI workshop, we offer below an analysis of some critical success factors (CSF's) distinguishing the prototypes with more and less utility.
The authors' roles in this situation extended the AI user/ provider model to cover two additional bridge roles (technology advocates and technology receptors) determined by the Software Engineering Institute [Fowler-Rifkin, 1990] to be significant facilitators in software technology transition.
Prasanta Bose, whose primary field has been AI and who served as the course's associate instructor, functioned as a Technology Advocate in advancing AI capabilities for application to software engineering (SE) problems. Barry Boehm, whose primary field has been SE and who served as the course's instructor, functioned as a Technology Receptor interested in finding new KB approaches to SE problems by knowledge mining and knowledge engineering of SE domain experts. Greg Toth represented both ends of the technology transition chain: as a course student producing a prototype KBSE [Toth,1993]; and as a Northrop software manager interested in new tools for Northrop software engineering applications.
Added June 25th, 2008
USC-CSE-94-504
Prasanta Bose, "Feature-Based Modeling of Software Component Interactions" (pdf)
Complex software-based system design poses significant tractability problems that can be addressed by using higher level abstractions of the design such as architecture level abstractions. The architecture-level design distinguishes coarse-grain components and interactions between them. This paper develops approximate modeling of the interactions between the components in terms of a set of features in order to facilitate limited types of consistency checking of the designs at the conceptualizing stage.
USC-CSE-94-503
Barry Boehm, Ming June Lee, Prasanta Bose, Ellis Horowitz, "Software Requirements Negotiation and Renegotiation Aids: A Theory-W Based Spiral Approach," 17th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE'95), ICSE, 1995, p. 243 (pdf)
A major problem in requirements engineering is obtaining requirements that address the concerns of multiple stakeholders. An approach to such a problem is the Theory-W based Spiral Model. One key element of this model is stakeholder collaboration and negotiation to obtain win-win requirements. This paper focuses on the problem of developing a support system for such a model. In particular, it identifies needs and capabilities required to address the problem of negotiation and renegotiation that arises when the model is applied to incremental requirements engineering. The paper formulates elements of the support system, called WinWin, for providing such capabilities. These elements were determined by experimenting with versions of WinWin and understanding their merits and deficiencies. The key elements of WinWin are described and their use in incremental requirements engineering are demonstrated, using an example renegotiation scenario from the domain of software engineering environments for satellite ground stations.
USC-CSE-94-502
Barry Boehm, Prasanta Bose, "Humans and Process Frameworks: Some Critical Process Elements," Proceedings, Software Process Workshop, 1994 (pdf)
Successful engineering of complex software systems require humans to engage collaboratively in multiple critical process elements. This paper identifies those necessary process elements and defines WinWin, a collaborative process model that addresses the process elements. It briefly describes a process support system for the WinWin model.
USC-CSE-94-501
Barry Boehm, Prasanta Bose, "A Collaborative Spiral Software Process Model Based on Theory W," Proceedings, Third International Software Process Conference, 1994, pp. 59-68 (pdf)
A primary difficulty in applying the spiral model has been the lack of explicit process guidance in determining the prospective system's objectives, constraints, and alternatives that get elaborated in each cycle. This paper presents an extension of the spiral model, called the Next Generation Process Model (NGPM), which uses the Theory W (win-win) approach [Boehm-Ross, 1989] to converge on a system's next-level objectives, constraints, and alternatives. The refined Spiral Model explicitly addresses the need for concurrent analysis, risk resolution, definition, and elaboration of both the software product and the software process in a collaborative manner. This paper also describes some of the key elements of the support system developed based on the model and refined through experiments with it.
USC-CSE-94-500
Barry Boehm, Prasanta Bose, "Critical Success Factors for Knowledge Based Software Engineering Applications," Automated Software Engineering, Springer Netherlands, Volume 2, Number 3, September, 1995, pp. 193-202 (pdf)
Ten prototype knowledge based software engineering (KBSE) applications were recently developed in a USC graduate course. These were expert-system applications falling into the Activity Coordination portion of the KBSA paradigm [Green et. al.,1983] rather than into the automatic program generation portion. The KBSE development guidelines for the prototypes included the primary critical success factor (CSF) heuristics cited in such references as [Waterman, 1986], [Jackson, 1990], and [Kelly, 1991] for identifying potentially successful expert systems applications. The resulting applications could be grouped into three categories, as follows:
i) Knowledge based process assistance
ii) Knowledge based software architecture and reuse assistance
USC-CSE-94-499
Cristina Gacek, Ahmed Abd-Allah, Bradford Clark, Barry Boehm, "Focused Workshop on Software Architectures: Issue Paper," Knowledge Summary of the USC-CSE Focused Workshop on Software Reuse, Center for Software Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, June 6-9, 1994 (pdf)
The Center for Software Engineering (CSE) at USC is currently involved in research on software architecting and architectures. The main objective of this workshop is to calibrate the CSE architecture research strategy to the Center Affiliates’ needs and priorities. This includes identifying and prioritizing the most critical architecture research issues; clarifying the nature of, and defining the interactions between the architecture subdisciplines (representation, style, domain specific software architectures, process, and infrastructure); and calibrating the maturity of emerging architecture infrastructure technologies with respect to Affiliate-scale needs.
This issue paper is the first step in the Focused Workshop process. It summarizes the CSE architecture research strategy elements and positions, and identifies candidate high-priority issues. The next steps in the process involve feedback from Affiliates on the strategy and issues via position papers and workshop discussions. We also plan to achieve the objectives of clarifying and calibrating the architecture state-of-the-art and state-of-the-practice via workshop presentations and discussions.
The strategies in the paper have already been influenced strongly by the USC-CSE Affiliates via the results of the February 1994 Executive Workshop on Information Architectures and Software Product Line Management.
Added June 24th, 2008
USC-CSE-94-498
Gregory Bolcer, "User Interface Design Assistance for Large-Scale Software Development," Automated Software Engineering, Springer Netherlands, Volume 2, Number 3, September, 1995, pp. 203-217 (pdf)
The User Interface Design Assistant (UIDA) addresses the specific design problems of style and integration consistency throughout the user interface development process and aids in the automated feedback and evaluation of a system's graphical user interface according to knowledge-based rules and project specific design examples. The UIDA system is able to quickly identify inconsistent style guide interpretations and UI design decisions resulting from distributed development of multiple UI sub-systems. This case arises when each sub-system conforms to the general style guide rules, but when integrated together, may appear inconsistent.
USC-CSE-94-497
Gregory Toth, "Software Technology Risk Advisor," Automated Software Engineering, Springer Netherlands, Volume 2, Number 3, September, 1995, pp. 231-248 (pdf)
This paper describes the Software Technology Risk Advisor (STRA), a knowledge-based software engineering tool that provides assistance in identifying and managing software technology risks. The STRA contains a knowledge base of software product and process needs, satisfying capabilities, and capability maturity factors. After a user ranks the importance of relevant needs to his or her project, the STRA automatically infers risk areas by evaluating disparities between project needs and technology maturities. Identified risks are quantitatively prioritized and the user is given risk reduction advice and rationale for each conclusion. This paper presents methods used in the STRA, along with discussions of knowledge acquisition, experimental results, current status, and related work.
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