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Technical Reports

USC-CSSE-2006-633

Nenad Medvidovic, Vladimir Jakobac, "Using Software Evolution to Focus Architectural Recovery," Automated Software Engineering, Springer Netherlands, Volume 13, Number 2, April 2006, pp. 225-256 (pdf)

Ideally, a software project commences with requirements gathering and specification, reaches its major milestone with system implementation and delivery, and then continues, possibly indefinitely, into an operation and maintenance phase. The software system's architecture is in many ways the linchpin of this process: it is supposed to be an effective reification of the system's technical requirements and to be faithfully reflected in the system's implementation. Furthermore, the architecture is meant to guide system evolution, while also being updated in the process. However, in reality developers frequently deviate from the architecture, causing architectural erosion, a phenomenon in which the initial, “as documented” architecture of an application is (arbitrarily) modified to the point where its key properties no longer hold. Architectural recovery is a process frequently used to cope with architectural erosion whereby the current, “as implemented” architecture of a software system is extracted from the system's implementation. In this paper we propose a light-weight approach to architectural recovery, called Focus, which has three unique facets. First, Focus uses a system's evolution requirements to isolate and incrementally recover only the fragment of the system's architecture affected by the evolution. In this manner, Focus allows engineers to direct their primary attention to the part of the system that is immediately impacted by the desired change; subsequent changes will incrementally uncover additional parts of the system's architecture. Secondly, in addition to software components, which are the usual target of existing recovery approaches, Focus also recovers the key architectural notions of software connector and architectural style. Finally, Focus does not only recover a system's architecture, but may in fact rearchitect the system. We have applied and evaluated Focus in the context of several off-the-shelf applications and architectural styles to date. We discuss its key strengths and point out several open issues that will frame our future work.

Added June 10th, 2008

USC-CSSE-2006-632

Barry Boehm, "A Theory and Process for Relazing Successful Systems," INSIGHT INCOSE, Volume 8, Issue 2, March 2006, pp. 11-12 (pdf)

Three key themes in the INCOSE Technical Vision [Crisp et. al., 2005] are:

• The INCOSE definition of Systems Engineering as "an interdisciplinary approach and means to enable the realization of successful systems."
• The objective of providing an underlying theory of systems engineering.
• The objective of determining the distinguishing intellectual content of systems engineering as compared to other engineering disciplines.

The paper introduces the essentials of an initial underlying theory of systems engineering. Its Fundamental System Success Theorem provides necessary and sufficient conditions for a system to be successful. These conditions involve determining and reconciling the value propositions of the system's success-critical stakeholders. Their elaboration leads to a System Success Realization Theorem, and a process that involves other components of the theory. These include utility theory, dependency theory, decision theory, and control theory. Their emphasis on stakeholder value provides a key distinction between system engineering's concern with stakeholder values and the essentially value-neutral orientation of other engineering disciplines.

Added July 25th, 2008

USC-CSSE-2006-631

Gan Wang, Jo Ann Lane, Ricardo Valerdi, Barry Boehm, "Towards a Work Breakdown Structure for Net Centric System of Systems Engineering and Management," 16th INCOSE Symposium, Orlando, FL, July 2006 (pdf)

As the system engineering industry sees an increasing focus on the lifecycle development, acquisition, and sustainment of net-centric Systems of Systems (SoS) and Family of Systems (FoS), organizations find the need to evolve current processes and tools to better handle the increased scope, scale, and complexity of these efforts. One such tool, the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) is important in planning and execution of program activities as requirements and goals of the program evolve. This paper provides an overview of the limitations of current WBSs with respect to SoS efforts and presents a proposed WBS structure that more adequately reflects the evolving processes and cross-organizational complexities.

Added May 12th, 2008

USC-CSSE-2006-630

Barry Boehm, Hasan Kitapci, "The WinWin Approach: Using a Requirements Negotiation Tool for Rationale Capture and Use," Rationale Management in Software Engineering, Springer Berlin / Heidelberg, Part 2, 2000, pp. 173-190 (pdf)

A highly cost-effective approach for rationale capture and management is to provide automated support, and capture the resulting artifacts of the process by which software and system requirements and solutions are negotiated. The WinWin process model, equilibrium model, and collaborative negotiation tool provide capabilities for capturing the artifacts. The MBASE software process model provides an approach for using and updating the rationale artifacts and process to keep it in a win-win state. Supporting requirements negotiation with attaching rationale can have a high impact on all phases of development by enabling much better context for change impact analysis as the increasingly frequent requirements changes arrive. The WinWin approach involves having a system's success-critical stakeholders participate in a negotiation process so they can converge on a mutually satisfactory or win-win set of requirements. The WinWin framework in essence captures stakeholder-oriented objectives, options and constraints in the form of a decision rationale.

Added April 29th, 2008

USC-CSSE-2006-629

Barry Boehm, Apurva Jain, "A Value-Based Software Process Framework," Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer Berlin / Heidelberg, Volume 3966/2006, pp. 1-10 (pdf)

This paper presents a value-based software process framework that has been derived from the 4+1 theory of value-based software engineering (VBSE). The value-based process framework integrates the four component theories – dependency, utility, decision, and control, to the central theory W, and orients itself as a 7-step process guide to practice value-based software engineering. We also illustrate applying the process framework to a supply chain organization through a case study analysis.

Added April 21st, 2008

USC-CSSE-2006-628

Zhihao Chen, Daniel Port, Yue Chen, Barry Boehm, "Evolving an Experience Base for Software Process Research," Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer Berlin / Heidelberg, Volume 3840/2006, pp. 433-448 (pdf)

Since 1996 the USC Center for Software Engineering has been accumulating a large amount of software process experience through many real-client project software engineering practices. Through the application of the Experience Factory approach, we have collected and evolved this experience into an experience base (eBASE) which has been leveraged successfully for empirically based software process research. Through eBASE we have realized tangible benefits in automating, organizational learning, and strategic advantages for software engineering research. We share our rationale for creating and evolving eBASE, give examples of how the eBASE has been used in recent process research, discuss current limitations and challenges with eBASE, and what we hope to do achieve in the future with it.

Added April 16th, 2008

USC-CSSE-2006-627

Raymond Madachy, Barry Boehm, Jo Ann Lane, "Spiral Lifecycle Increment Modeling for New Hybrid Processes," Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer Berlin / Heidelberg, Volume 3966/2006, pp. 167-177 (pdf)

The spiral lifecycle is being extended to address new challenges for Software-Intensive Systems of Systems (SISOS), such as coping with rapid change while simultaneously assuring high dependability. A hybrid plan-driven and agile process has been outlined to address these conflicting challenges with the need to rapidly field incremental capabilities. A system dynamics model has been developed to assess the incremental hybrid process and support project decision-making. It estimates cost and schedule for multiple increments of a hybrid process that uses three specialized teams. It considers changes due to external volatility and feedback from user-driven change requests, and dynamically re-estimates and allocates resources in response to the volatility. Deferral policies and team sizes can be experimented with, and it includes tradeoff functions between cost and the timing of changes within and across increments, length of deferral delays, and others. Both the hybrid process and simulation model are being evolved on a very large scale incremental project and other potential pilots.

Added April 16th, 2008

USC-CSSE-2006-626

Barry Boehm, "A View of 20th and 21st Century Software Engineering," Proceedings of the 28th International Conference on Software Engineering, International Conference on Software Engineering, 2006, pp. 12-29 (pdf)

George Santayana's statement,"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," is only half true. The past also includes successful histories. If you haven't been made aware of them, you're often condemned not to repeat their successes.

In a rapidly expanding field such as software engineering, this happens a lot. Extensive studies of many software projects such as the Standish Reports offer convincing evidence that many projects fail to repeat past successes.

This paper tries to identify at least some of the major past software experiences that were well worth repeating, and some that were not. It also tries to identify underlying phenomena influencing the evolution of software engineering practices that have at least helped the author appreciate how our field has gotten to where it has been and where it is.

A counterpart Santayana-like statement about the past and future might say,"In an era of rapid change, those who repeat the past are condemned to a bleak future." (Think about the dinosaurs, and think carefully about software engineering maturity models that emphasize repeatability.)

This paper also tries to identify some of the major sources of change that will affect software engineering practices in the next couple of decades, and identifies some strategies for assessing and adapting to these sources of change. It also makes some first steps towards distinguishing relatively timeless software engineering principles that are risky not to repeat, and conditions of change under which aging practices will become increasingly risky to repeat.

Added November 9th, 2007

USC-CSSE-2006-625

Donald J. Reifer, Barry Boehm, "Providing Incentives for Spiral Developments: An Award Fee Plan," Defense Journal, Supplemental Issue, Volume 12, Number 1, 2006 (pdf)

This article describes a set of award fee criteria and an award fee process and plan that enable buyers to provide suppliers with incentives for using evolutionary acquisition and spiral development approaches when developing large-scale, softwareintensive systems per DoD Directive 5000.1 and DoD Instruction 5000.2. Most Senior Program Managers agree that spiral development is a good idea. However, many quickly become confused when trying to provide contractual incentives for large system acquisitions. To reduce confusion, the authors have developed an award fee plan that Program Managers can use to stimulate on budget, schedule and technical performance by supplier teams who are pursuing system development and deployment under contract to the government or a Lead System Integrator.

Added November 9th, 2007

USC-CSSE-2006-624

Hasan Kitapci, Barry Boehm, "Using a Hybrid Method for Formalizing Informal Stakeholder Requirements Inputs," Software Process Improvement and Practice, Wiley, 2007 (pdf)

Success of software development depends on the quality of the requirements specification. Moreover, good – sufficiently complete, consistent, traceable, and testable – requirements are a prerequisite for later activities of the development project. Without understanding what the stakeholders really want and need, and writing these requirements, projects will not develop what the stakeholders wanted.

During the development of the WinWin negotiation model and the EasyWinWin requirements negotiation method, we have gained considerable experience in capturing informal requirements in over 100 projects. However, the transition from informal representations to semi-formal and formal representations is still a challenging problem.

Based on our analysis of the projects to date, we have developed an integrated set of gap-bridging methods as a hybrid method to formalize informal stakeholder requirements inputs. The basic idea is that orchestrating these gap-bridging methods through the requirements engineering process can significantly eliminate requirements related problems and ease the process of formality transition.

Added December 19th, 2006

USC-CSSE-2006-623

Raymond Madachy, Barry Boehm, Jo Ann Lane, "Assessing Hybrid Incremental Processes for SISOS Development," Software Process Improvement and Practice, Wiley, 2007 (pdf)

New processes are being assessed to address modern challenges for Software-Intensive Systems of Systems (SISOS), such as coping with rapid change while simultaneously assuring high dependability. A hybrid agile and plan-driven process based on the spiral lifecycle has been outlined to address these conflicting challenges with the need to rapidly field incremental capabilities in a value-based framework. A system dynamics model has been developed to assess the incremental hybrid process and support project decision-making. It estimates cost and schedule for multiple increments of a hybrid process that uses three specialized teams, and also considers the mission value of software capabilities. It considers changes due to external volatility and feedback from user-driven change requests, and dynamically re-estimates and allocates resources in response to the volatility. Deferral policies and team sizes can be experimented with, and it includes tradeoff functions between cost and the timing of changes within and across increments, length of deferral delays, and others. We illustrate how the model can be used to determine optimal agile team size to handle changes. Both the hybrid process and simulation model are being evolved on a very large scale incremental SISOS project and other potential pilots.

Added December 18th, 2006

USC-CSE-2006-622

Dan Wu, "Security Functional Requirements Analysis for Developing Secure Software," Qualifying Exam Report (pdf)

In the past decade, the usage of Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) products has increased significantly in building software systems. The empirical results at the Center for Systems and Software Engineering (CSSE) reveal that the percentage of COTS Based Applications (CBA) in CSSE e-Services projects increased from 28% in 1997 to 70% in 2002 [Boehm et al 2002], which generally matches with the Standish Group’s survey results for the IT field at large. [Standish 2001].

At the same time, according to the US Computer Emergency Response Team statistics, the number of annual published COTS product vulnerabilities increased dramatically as well from 417 in 1997 to 5990 in 2005 [CERT Statistics]. Today, COTS security has become more important than ever before for many organizations whose daily business heavily relies upon healthy IT infrastructures. Competing with often limited IT resources and the fast changing internet threats, the ability to prioritize security practices correctly and efficiently has become a critical success factor to every modern organization.

Added December 6th, 2006

USC-CSE-2006-621

Yue Chen, "Stakeholder/Value Driven Security Threat Modeling for COTS Based System," Qualifying Exam Report (pdf)

In the past decade, the usage of Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) products has increased significantly in building software systems. The empirical results at the Center for Systems and Software Engineering (CSSE) reveal that the percentage of COTS Based Applications (CBA) in CSSE e-Services projects increased from 28% in 1997 to 70% in 2002 [Boehm et al 2002], which generally matches with the Standish Group’s survey results for the IT field at large. [Standish 2001]. At the same time, according to the US Computer Emergency Response Team statistics, the number of annual published COTS product vulnerabilities increased dramatically as well from 417 in 1997 to 5990 in 2005 [CERT Statistics]. Today, COTS security has become more important than ever before for many organizations whose daily business heavily relies upon healthy IT infrastructures. Competing with often limited IT resources and the fast changing internet threats, the ability to prioritize security practices correctly and efficiently has become a critical success factor to every modern organization.

Added December 6th, 2006

USC-CSE-2006-620

Yue Chen, "Stakeholder Value Driven Threat Modeling for Off The Shelf Based Systems," 2007 ICSE Doctoral Symposium (pdf)

This paper abstract summarizes the Threat Modeling method based on Attacking Path Analysis (T-MAP) which quantifies and prioritizes security threats by calculating the total severity weights of relevant attacking paths for Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) based systems. Compared to existing approaches, T-MAP is dynamic and sensitive to system stakeholder value priorities and IT environment. It distills the technical details of thousands of relevant software vulnerabilities into management-friendly numbers at a high-level. In its initial usage in a large IT organization, T-MAP has demonstrated significant strength in COTS vulnerability prioritizing and estimating security investment effectiveness, as well as COTS security assessment in early project life-cycle. Furthermore, a software tool has been developed to automate the T-MAP.

Added December 6th, 2006

USC-CSE-2006-619

Barry Boehm, Apurva Jain, "A Value-Based Theory of Systems Engineering," Proceedings, INCOSE 2006 (pdf)

The INCOSE definition of “systems engineering” is “an interdisciplinary approach and means to enable the realization of successful systems.” The Value-Based Theory of Systems Engineering presents necessary and sufficient conditions for realizing a successful system and elaborates them into an executable process. The theory and process are illustrated on a supply-chain system example, and evaluated with respect to criteria for a good theory.

Added April 16, 2008

USC-CSE-2006-618

Paul Carlock, Jo Ann Lane, "System of Systems Enterprise Systems Engineering, the Enterprise Architecture Management Framework, and System of Systems Cost Estimation," 21st International Forum on COCOMO and Software Cost Modeling (pdf)

Today's need for more complex, more capable systems in a short timeframe is leading more organizations towards the integration of existing systems, Commercial-Off-the-Shelf (COTS) products, and new systems into network-centric, knowledge-based Systems of Systems (SoSs). With this development approach, system development processes to define the new architecture, identify sources to either supply or develop the required components, and eventually integrate and test these high level components are evolving and are being referred to as SoS Engineering (SoSE). Recent reports indicate that SoSE activities are considerably different from the more traditional systems engineering (SE) activities and various researchers are working to describe these differences in SoSE process models. One of these models is the SoS Enterprise Systems Engineering (ESE) and associated Enterprise Architecture Management Framework (EAMF) developed by Dr. Paul Carlock and Robert Fenton. In addition, efforts are underway at the University of Southern California (USC) Center for Systems and Software Engineering (CSSE) to develop a cost model to estimate the effort required to define, architect, and integrate component systems into an SoS framework. This paper provides an overview of the SoS ECE and EAMF, provides an overview of the USC CSSE SoSE cost model, attempts to evaluate how well the EAMF captures the unique aspects of SoSE identified in recent SoSE studies, and shows how the cost model addresses some of the unique aspects of SoSE identified in both the EAMF and recent SoSE studies.

Added October 30th, 2006

USC-CSE-2006-617

George Edwards, Sam Malek, Nenad Medvidovic, "Scenario-Driven Dynamic Analysis of Distributed Architectures," Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Fundamental Approaches to Software Engineering (FASE), March 2007 (pdf)

Software architecture constitutes a promising approach to the development of large-scale distributed systems, but architecture description languages (ADLs) and their associated architectural analysis techniques suffer from several important shortcomings. This paper presents a novel approach that reconceptualizes ADLs within the model-driven engineering (MDE) paradigm to address their shortcomings. Our approach combines extensible modeling languages based on architectural constructs with a model interpreter framework that enables rapid implementation of customized dynamic analyses at the architectural level. Our approach is demonstrated in the eXtensible Tool chain for Evaluation of Architectural Models (XTEAM), a suite of ADL extensions and model transformation engines targeted specifically for highly distributed, resource-constrained, and mobile computing environments. XTEAM model transformations generate system simulations that provide a dynamic, scenario- and risk-driven view of the executing system. This information allows an architect to compare architectural alternatives and weigh trade-offs between multiple design goals, such as system performance, reliability, and resource consumption. XTEAM provides the extensibility to easily accommodate both new modeling language features and new architectural analyses.

Added October 30th, 2006

USC-CSE-2006-616

Ray Madachy, Barry Boehm, Dan Wu, "Comparison and Assessment of Cost Models for NASA Flight Projects," 21st International Forum on COCOMO and Software Cost Modeling (pdf)

This research is assessing the strengths, limitations, and improvement needs of existing cost, schedule, quality and risk models for critical flight software for the NASA AMES project Software Risk Advisory Tools. This particular report focuses only on the cost model aspect and supersedes the cost model sections in a previously delivered draft report [USC-CSE 2006].

A comparative survey and analysis of cost models used by NASA flight projects is described. The models include COCOMO II, SEER-SEM and True S. We look at evidence of accuracy, the need for calibration, and the use of knowledge bases to reflect specific domain factors. The models are assessed against a common database of relevant NASA projects. The overriding primary focus is on flight projects, but part of the work also looks at related sub-domains for critical NASA software. They are assessed as applicable in some of the following analyses. This report also addresses the critical NASA domain factors of high reliability and high complexity, and how the cost models address them.

Added October 28th, 2006

USC-CSE-2006-615

Jesal Bhuta, Chris A. Mattmann, Nenad Medvidovic, Barry Boehm, "A Framework for the Assessment and Selection on Software Compononents and Connectors in COTS-Based Architectures," Sixth Working IEEE/IFIP Conference on Software Architecture, Mumbai, India (pdf)

Software systems today are composed from prefabricated commercial components and connectors that provide complex functionality and engage in complex interactions. Unfortunately, because of the distinct assumptions made by developers of these products, successfully integrating them into a software system can be complicated, often causing budget and schedule overruns. A number of integration risks can often be resolved by selecting the 'right' set of COTS components and connectors that can be integrated with minimal effort. In this paper we describe a framework for selecting COTS software components and connectors ensuring their interoperability in software-intensive systems. Our framework is built upon standard definitions of both COTS components and connectors and is intended for use by architects and developers during the design phase of a software system. We highlight the utility of our framework using a challenging example from the data-intensive systems domain. Our preliminary experience in using the framework indicates an increase in interoperability assessment productivity by 50% and accuracy by 20%.

Added September 19th, 2006

USC-CSE-2006-614

Jo Ann Lane, Barry Boehm, "System-of-Systems Cost Estimation: Analysis of Lead System Integrator Engineering Activities," Inter-Symposium 2006, The International Institute for Advanced Studies in Systems Research and Cybernetics (pdf)

As organizations strive to expand system capabilities through the development of system-of-systems (SoS) architectures, they want to know "how much effort" and "how long" to implement the SoS. In order to answer these questions, it is important to first understand the types of activities performed in SoS architecture development and integration and how these vary across different SoS implementations. This paper provides results of research conducted to determine types of SoS Lead System Integrator (LSI) activities and how these differ from the more traditional system engineering activities described in Electronic Industries Alliance (EIA) 632 (“Processes for Engineering a System”). This research further analyzed effort and schedule issues on “very large” SoS programs to more clearly identify and profile the types of activities performed by the typical LSI and to determine organizational characteristics that significantly impact overall success and productivity of the LSI effort. The results of this effort have been captured in a reduced-parameter version of the Constructive SoS Integration Cost Model (COSOSIMO) that estimates LSI SoS Engineering (SoSE) effort.Keywords: System of Systems, System of Systems Engineering, Lead System Integrator, Cost Model.

Added September 19th, 2006

USC-CSE-2006-613

Barry Boehm, Jo Ann Lane, "21st Century Processes for Acquiring 21st Century Software-Intensive Systems of Systems," CrossTalk, May 2006 (pdf)

Our experiences in helping to define, acquire, develop, and assess 21st century software-intensive system of systems (SISOS) have taught us that traditional 20th century acquisition and development processes do not work well on such systems. This article summarizes the characteristics of such systems, and indicates the major problem areas in using traditional processes on them. We also present new processes that we and others have been developing, applying, and evolving to address 21st century SISOS. These include extensions to the risk-driven spiral model to cover broad (many systems), deep (many supplier levels), and long (many increments) acquisitions needing rapid fielding, high assurance, adaptability to high change traffic, and complex interactions with evolving Commercial Off-the-Shelf (COTS) products, legacy systems, and external systems.

Added September 19th, 2006

USC-CSE-2006-612

Jo Ann Lane, "Factors Influencing System-of-Systems Architecting and Integration Costs," Proceedings of Conference on Systems Engineering Research, 2005 (pdf)

Today’s need for more complex, more capable systems in a short timeframe is leading more organizations towards the integration of existing systems into network-centric, knowledge-based system-of-systems (SoS). Software and system cost model tools to-date have focused on the software and system development activities of a single software system. As we view the new SoS architectures, we find that the effort associated with the integration of these SoSs is not handled well, if at all, in current cost models. USC’s Center for Software Engineering (CSE) began work on a SoS cost model, the Constructive SoS Integration Model (COSOSIMO), in late 2003. This model has evolved using feedback obtained from USC CSE affiliates and other experts in industry and academia.

This paper presents an overview of the COSOSIMO cost model, descriptions of the size drivers and cost factors currently in the model, a summary of survey feedback received from USC CSE affiliates and other interested experts from industry, and the impact of survey findings on the current COSOSIMO cost model. It concludes with future plans for the COSOSIMO model.

Added September 19th, 2006

USC-CSE-2006-611

Jo Ann Lane, Barry Boehm, "Synthesis of Existing Cost Models to Meet System of Systems Needs," Proceedings of Conference on Systems Engineering Research (CSER), 2006 (pdf)

Today’s need for more complex, more capable systems in a short timeframe is leading more organizations towards the integration of existing systems into network-centric, knowledge-based system-of-systems (SoS). Software and system cost model tools to date have focused on the software and system development activities of a single software system, but none to date adequately estimate the integration of multiple systems into an SoS. This paper presents an overview of the activities that must be included in an SoS cost model and describes an approach for estimating SoS effort using the Constructive Cost Model (COCOMO) suite of estimation tools to estimate SoS Lead System Integrator (LSI) effort as well as the total SoS development effort.

Added September 19th, 2006

USC-CSE-2006-610

Jo Ann Lane, Ricardo Valerdi, "Synthesizing SoS Concepts for Use in Cost Estimation," Proceedings of IEEE 2005 International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (pdf)

Today’s need for more complex, capable systems in a short timeframe is leading many organizations towards the integration of existing systems into network-centric, knowledge-based system-of-systems (SoS). Software and system cost model tools to date have focused on the software and system development activities of a single system. When viewing the new SoS architectures, one finds that the effort associated with the design and integration of these SoSs is not handled well, if at all, in current cost models. This paper includes (1) a comparison of various SoS definitions and concepts with respect to cost models, (2) a classification of these definitions in terms of product, process, and personnel focus, and (3) the definition of a set of discriminators for defining model boundaries and potential drivers for an SoS cost estimation model. Eleven SoS definitions are synthesized to provide reasonable coverage for different properties of SoS and illustrated in two examples.

Added September 19th, 2006

USC-CSE-2006-609

Yue Chen, Barry Boehm, Luke Sheppard, "Measuring Security Investment Benefit for COTS Based Systems - A Stakeholder Value Driven Approach," 29th International Conference on Software Engineering, September 8th, 2006 (pdf)

This paper presents the improved version of the Threat Modeling method based on Attacking Path Analysis (T-MAP) which quantifies security threats by calculating the total severity weights of relevant attacking paths for Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) based systems.

Added September 9th, 2006

USC-CSE-2006-608

Jesal Bhuta, "A Framework for Intelligent Assessment and Resolution of Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) Product Incompatibilities" (pdf)

Boehm and Scherlis in [Boehm and Scherlis 1992] introduced Megaprogramming, the practice of software construction in a component-oriented fashion heavily based on software reuse. It is an effective technique of reducing long-term software development cost, improving software quality, and reducing development time. One critical factor that influences the success of megaprogramming is the effort taken to actually reuse available software components. This process entails the identification of the requirements to be satisfied by the component, selection of a component that satisfies these requirements, and using it appropriately in the system. Some challenges in the past reuse attempts have been in identifying the amount of effort required to develop reusable components, estimating the number of components to reuse, effectively selecting these components and adapting the components to differences in domain and/or architectural assumptions.

Added June 16th, 2006

USC-CSE-2006-607

Yue Chen, Barry Boehm, Luke Sheppard, "Value Driven Security Threat Modeling Based on Attacking Path Analysis," 40th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, June 15, 2006 (pdf)

Security threat modeling has been an important but difficult topic. This paper presents a novel quantitative threat modeling method, the Threat Modeling method based on Attacking Path Analysis (T-MAP), which quantifies security threats by calculating the total severity weights of relevant attacking paths for Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) systems. Compared to existing approaches, T-MAP is sensitive to an organization's business value priorities and IT environment. It distills the technical details of thousands of software vulnerabilities into management-friendly numbers at a high-level. T-MAP can help system designers evaluate the security performance of COTS systems and analyze the effectiveness of security practices. In the case study, we demonstrate the steps of using T-MAP to analyze the cost-effectiveness of how IT system patching and upgrades can improve security. In addition, we introduce a software tool that automates the T-MAP framework.

Added May 11th, 2006

USC-CSE-2006-606

Jo Ann Lane, "COSOSIMO Parameter Definitions," Symposium on Complex Systems Engineering, January 11-12, 2007 (pdf)

The Constructive System-of-Systems (SoS) Integration Cost Model (COSOSIMO) is designed to estimate the effort associated with the Lead System Integrator (LSI) activities to define the SoS architecture, identify sources to either supply or develop the required SoS component systems, and eventually integrate and test these high level component systems. This technical report is an update to the COSOSIMO parameter definitions dated March 2006 and describes the parameters for each of the COSOSIMO sub-models. The parameters include a set of size drivers that are used to calculate a nominal effort for the sets of activities associated with the sub-model and a set of cost drivers that are used to adjust the nominal effort based on related SoS architecture, process, and personnel characteristics.

Added May 11th, 2006

USC-CSE-2006-605

Dan Wu, Ye Yang, "Towards An Approach for Security Risk Analysis in COTS Based Development," Proceedings of Software Process Workshop/Workshop on Software Process Simulation 2006, Shanghai, China, May 2006 (pdf)

More and more companies tend to use secure products as COTS to develop their secure systems due to resource limitations. The security concerns add more complexity as well as potential risks to COTS selection process, and it is always a great challenge for developers to make the selection decisions. In this paper, we provide a method for security risk analysis in COTS based de-velopment (CBD) based on Common Criteria and our previous work in identi-fying general risk items for CBD. The research result provides useful insights for developers in identifying security risks, so that it can be used to aid for the COTS selection decision.

Added May 10th, 2006

USC-CSE-2006-604

Chiyoung Seo, Sam Malek, Nenad Medvidovic, "An Energy Consumption Framework for Distributed Java-Based Software Systems," Proceedings of the Twenty-Second ACM/IEEE International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE 2007), Atlanta, Georgia, November 5-7, 2007, pp. 421-424 (pdf)