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I’m both thrilled and worried about the fate of the software industry over the next ten years.http://www.softwarerenovation.com/WorriedMind.pdf. Although we often use the term “software engineering” to describe our activities, the truth is that writing programs is still largely a craft. Advertising yourself as a software engineer is actually a crime in many parts of the United States. Nevertheless, I believe that we stand on the threshold of a true engineering age for software. Object oriented programming is becoming the norm. The C++ language is now standardized and becoming widely used. The Unified Modeling Language is helping us communicate more effectively with one another. But what really differentiates engineering from craft work? By definition, engineering is the application of scientific principles to practical uses. For example, electrical engineers apply their scientific knowledge to design and build radios, telephones, computers, and so on. Unlike electronics and other hard sciences, however, we software folk have no natural laws or principles to limit us. No Ohm’s Law. I’m thrilled that the software industry has come this far and that we may be near an engineering age of computing. Whether you prefer to be called an artist or an engineer, only a principled approach to software construction will inspire respect and confidence from your customers. With this in mind, I challenge each of you to discover, learn, and apply only the finest principles of software development. M1 Global provides software and services designed for optimizing processes involving multi-channel interactions (Web, voice, self-service, collaboration, email) for companies of any size.. This team of experts had conceived an idea for a software application that would revolutionize the way that businesses were able to interact with customers, suppliers, and partners. The software application would overlay a transactional infrastructure that would facilitate all the “customer” (customer/ supplier/ partner/ employee) interactions. Furthermore, the vision included supporting and coordinating multi-media interaction channels in the software, which is a significant undertaking. The vision was BIG; the software development project was even bigger. They then determined the software needed to be developed according to a timeline that mapped to the other parts of their business. That meant a software BETA had to be in the marketplace within 12 months. To accomplish all their goals on time and on budget, the team had to reduce the amount of capital needed to fund the development of the software product in order to conserve enough capital to develop the multi-media interaction channel infrastructure. This meant finding a way to rapidly prototype the software. It also meant looking for the most efficient software development methodology and the most cost effective development resources. Faced with the problem of limited budget and a short, time-to-market requirement, M1 Global chose the following solution for the software development project. The model represented exactly what the software application would do regardless of the ... John works for BAS Corporation, which grew over years through mergers and acquisitions of companies around the world.http://www.ism-journal.com/ITToday/AU9384_C002.pdf. BAS Corporation wants to consolidate the disparate products from its different companies into a single product line to simplify new product development and achieve economies of scale. This chapter looks at issues of concern in global software development (GSD) projects and provides factors that are critical to the success of such projects. One reason for this is that the extent to which people in collocated environ-ments rely on ad hoc and informal communications to develop software is under-recognized. For globally distributed software development projects, model-driven requirements engineering offers several benefits that help overcome some of the issues related to communication, coordination, and control. The QAW uses stakeholders early in the software development life cycle to discover the quality attribute require-ments that drive the structure of a system; ADD uses these requirements to design the architecture; and the ATAM helps stakeholders understand the consequences once an architecture for a system has been determined. At the end of the elaboration phase, a more reliable software development plan is put into place and the con-struction phase of the software begins. This phase is the operational capability milestone phase because at the end of this phase the software is deployed in the production environment of one or more beta customers to demonstrate its operational capability. Once operational, the software moves to the transition phase. This is the product release milestone phase, as the ... The process enhances team productivity and delivers software best practices via guidelines, templates and tool mentors for all critical software lifecycle activities.. Its goal is to ensure the production of high-quality software that meets the needs of its end-users, within a predictable schedule and budget. Rather than focusing on the production of large amount of paper documents, the Unified Process emphasizes the development and maintenance of models—semantically rich representations of the software system under development. The Rational Unified Process captures many of the best practices in modern software development in a form that is suitable for a wide range of projects and organizations. The Rational Unified Process describes how to effectively deploy commercially proven approaches to software development for software development teams. Develop Software Iteratively Given today’s sophisticated software systems, it is not possible to sequentially first define the entire problem, design the entire solution, build the software and then test the product at the end. Visually Model Software The process shows you how to visually model software to capture the structure and behavior of architectures and components. Verify Software Quality Poor application performance and poor reliability are common factors which dramatically inhibit the acceptability of today’s software applications. Control Changes to Software The ability to manage change is making certain that each change is acceptable, and being able to track changes is essential in an environment in which change is inevitable. The software lifecycle is broken into ... This paper provides an overview of the "Standard for Safety, UL 1998 –Software in Programmable Components".http://www.ul.com/software/UL_1998_FINAL.pdf. The process criteria provides a foundation in UL 1998, however, a key objective was to augment these criteria by further codifying fail-safe and fault tolerant design requirements for software controlling safety-related functions. It was important to use UL 1998 to push the state of software engineering requirements forward by identifying intrinsic criteria associated with the delivered code. The scope of the UL 1998 Standard was limited to application-specific, non-networked software in a programmable component embedded in a product for which a failure may result in a risk of fire, electric shock or injury to persons. Approach: Given the functional complexity inherent in software logic embedded in programmable components, the requirements in the UL 1998 Standard address safety management during development and maintenance by specifying both process criteria and design criteria. As such, it emphasizes the conduct of risk analysis activities; fail-safe and fault-tolerant criteria related to the design of safety-related software; consideration of provisions for hardware malfunctions; the application of analysis and test methods; documentation; handling of software changes; qualification of off-the-shelf software, and labeling that uniquely identifies the specifics of the product interface, the hardware platform, and the software configuration. Here the term "programmable" is taken to be "any manner in which one can alter the software wherein the behavior of the component can be altered. The above ... Houston’s entrepreneurial culture and strong foundation in the software industry supports innovation and business development.http://www.houston.org/blackfenders/16QW010.pdf. There are more than 300 software development companies with estimated revenues of more than $4.2 billion annually and more than 49,000 software professionals in the Houston area. The city’s diverse population promotes a global outlook and appreciation for the benefits of multinational trade. Ample infrastructure ranging from international airports to well-developed technology access points provides key supporting features for software development. Houston Technology Center’s 2003 study showed that 87 percent of companies that responded to their survey had from two to 100 employees. The typical software development company is small, with a median size of $3.3 million in annual revenues and 22 employees. Despite the offshoring trend, most of the software development enterprises in Houston employ local programmers, not just support services and sales staff functions. The average age of software companies in Houston is 12 years and the median is eight years. A large number of companies have managed to thrive through the bursting of the internet bubble. Examples of large Houston area software companies (by number of employees) include BMC Software, Inc. (1,950), Universal Computer Systems (800), Getronics (675), and Landmark Graphics Corporation (569). Several companies have evolved from developing custom solutions for a specific client to eventually standardizing these applications for the general market. This trend toward companies developing a mass-market product from an otherwise custom application ... Most all of the recommendations remain valid today and many could significantly and positively impact DoD software development capability.http://www.acq.osd.mil/dsb/reports/defensesoftware.pdf. The commercial market is attacking data security and beginning to address network security; they have not begun to address software security issues. In addition, there were numerous examples where the acquisition and/or contractor team lacked adequate software skills to execute the program. In one case, a program requiring more than 2 million lines of real-time embedded code was awarded to a contractor who had no meaningful software development experience. The Task Force also recommends that a software systems architect be assigned to each program to be responsible and accountable for the software system. The DoD and its contractor base are increasingly competing with commercial software organizations for a limited pool of qualified software professionals. Most software engineering projects still employ a waterfall model as a software management process. Because iterative development is more challenging than the simple management paradigm presented by the waterfall model, disciplined software management and common sense will remain one of the paramount discriminators of software engineering success or failure. In addition to analyzing software to identify defects in general, developers can also analyze software to identify security vulnerabilities and detect malicious code. The third recommendation, Improve software skills of acquisition and program management, is directed at ensuring that DoD acquisition personnel are adequately trained on software-intensive programs (not the case ... The WDC software development system consists of a two-pass macro assembler, an object module linker, and an object module librarian.http://www.westerndesigncenter.com/wdc/datasheets/Assembler_Linker.pdf. First, the default instruction set for the WDC02AS assembler is the 65C02 while the default instruction set for the WDC816AS assembler is the 65C816. Assembler directives control the organization of source files into modules for the creation of libraries. Other directives allow the creation and nesting of up to 250 named sections of code or data as well as 5 pre-defined sections. Symbols can be made private to a source file or public so they can be referenced by other source files. Instead, object files are created that can be combined together with other object files and possibly libraries to produce the final output program. The linker then patches any references that occur from one file to another with the proper address. The librarian places a special dictionary of all the functions defined within the library at the front of the library. The source to an entire program does not need to all be in one file. Macros allow commonly used sequences of instructions to be defined once and a name associated with that definition. An object file is a binary file which contains the translation of each assembly language statement into it's binary equivalent. The linker takes multiple object modules and combines them together to produce a single output file. The output file produced by the linker is either in binary or hex format. Since the module is the smallest unit that the linker will work with, placing each function in its own module allows the linker to only select the functions ... The author presents techniques on how software development teams can add Scrum ideas to an existing RUP environment.http://www.controlchaos.com/module/RationalEdge0205.pdf. Scrum is a collection of interesting project management patterns used to wrap agile software projects. Scrum is an agile* software-management process that can help you navigate your project through iterative, incremental software development. It recognizes the importance of the social aspect in software engineering: the name derives from the game of rugby, and refers to "a rugby play in which the forwards of each side come together in a tight formation and struggle to gain possession of the ball when it is tossed in among them."2 The process is quick, adaptive, and self-organizing, and it represents a significant change from sequential development* processes. Scrum believes that software should not be developed according to the processes used in typical manufacturing -- that is, in a repeating fashion. This repetition makes the input and output parameters more predictive and descriptive, but this is not a helpful goal in today's software engineering. Time to market, return on investment, and the need to build a vision alongside the customer are among the major challenges in modern software engineering. The RUP and other agile software engineering processes are capable of addressing these challenges. Iterative software engineering with open scope, focusing on working software over comprehensive documentation. Iterative development Software engineering activities are performed frequently in short and repetitive cycles, with feedback from stakeholders after each iteration. Product backlog Feature ... Computer software engineers apply the principles and techniques of computer science, engineering, and mathematical analysis to the design, de-velopment, testing, and evaluation of the software and systems that enable computers to perform their many applications.http://www.bls.gov/oco/pdf/ocos267.pdf. Software engineers working in applications or systems develop-ment analyze users’ needs and design, construct, test, and maintain computer applications software or systems. Software engineers can be involved in the design and development of many types of software, including software for operating systems and network distribution, and compilers, which convert programs for execution on a computer. Computer applications software engineers analyze users’ needs and design, construct, and maintain general computer applications software or specialized utility programs. Some software engineers develop both packaged systems and systems software or create customized applications. Computer software engineers often work as part of a team that designs new hardware, software, and systems. As they strive to improve software for users, many computer software engineers interact with customers and coworkers. Computer software engineers who are employed by software vendors and con-sulting fi rms, for example, spend much of their time away from their offi ces, frequently traveling overnight to meet with customers. The usual degree concentration for applications software engineers is computer science or software engineering; for systems software engineers, it is computer science or computer information systems. Increasing emphasis on computer security suggests that ... Software is now an integral part of the design, development, and manufacturing of our products.http://www.genium.com/pdf/K19.pdf. Because of the importance of software, it must be treated as another form of engineering, not as an add-on to the electromechanical area. This means that the standard development and documentation processes that are used for hardware must also be used for software. The adherence to certain common development standards documents that the software is being developed in a consistent and predictable manner. A more important reason for standards, including documentation standards, is to provide a common basis of understanding and communication between the developers and the acquirers of software. This understand-ing should result in quicker agreements on specifications, fewer change orders, and the production of better quality software. A standard process of development and documentation will also help the software development organization itself. This, in turn, helps during product testing when determining whether a certain problem is hardware or software related. This is also called beta testing and assures that the software meets cus-tomer needs and expectations. This is also called alpha testing and assures that software operates according to its design. This means that a development process must be chosen and documented by the organization so that all software projects follow the same process, thus allowing the process to be modified and improved as lessons are learned. While it is usually used with individual programs, it can also be used with multi-file software systems where software functionality is divided among multiple ... Defining a Software Development LifeCycle (SDLC) can raise many behavioral or “people” related challenges.http://www.cmcrossroads.com/articles/bajul02.pdf. Any effort to specify how people should work is bound to meet with extensive resistance and even hostility on the part of the developers who must adhere to the development process. Yet it is essential that the successful CM Practitioner create a release process that is repeatable and predictable. Tremendous losses can occur if a major company has production applications that cannot be quickly fixed because they do not have the exact sources and build dependencies safeguarded and available. In this article, we would like to look at how to create a useful SDLC that specifies the workflow necessary to support the Software Development Process, especially Release Management. Driving Out Fear… Deming wisely pointed out that quality organizations need to create an environment that allows people to work without fear. Many employees are driven to “do nothing”, because taking action too often results in penalties as a result of making mistakes or failing to successfully complete a challenging task. Many people do not like having their work scrutinized and evaluated by others who are in a position of power. Defining a Software Development Life Cycle can inadvertently result in a similar sense of fear on the part of developers who sense that their autonomy and control of their environment may be at risk. This situation can lead to significant resistance on the part of workers, whose cooperation is essential to improving the software development process. Becoming a good Salesman The successful CM Practitioner is able to present ... Can a country with inefficient ports, unreliable trains, and intermittent electrical service ever hope to compete with American and European firms in engineering networks, writing commercially distributed software, and developing sophisticated web sites? Last year, Indian software companies grossed US$4.http://www.techknowlogia.org/TKL_Articles/PDF/148.pdf.0 billion and two-thirds of that was from exports. India’s col-leges and universities could use U.S. and British textbooks, computer guides, and software manuals, which often are is-sued in revised versions every year or two, without transla-tions that would otherwise be difficult and expensive. In addition, India’s software development firms do a substantial part of their work as subcontractors for U.S. and British Gregg Jackson and Vishnu Karki* firms, and so English language skills are important for coor-dination with those firms. Salaries in India are low and that allows Indian software de-velopment companies to under-bid competitors in the U.S. and other developed countries. Having lost that opportunity for computer hardware manu-facture, the Government decided to win a share of the rapidly growing global market for computer software development. Software is the instructions that guide computer operations. Elaborate software is needed for management information systems, accounting and financial systems, computer graph-ics, computer games, instructional software, and web pages. About 250,000 such professionals are employed in India and many others are employed abroad.[3] About 700 Indian companies export software and software services and many others serve only the domestic market. In-dian companies now export software ... With the rapid growth in complex software-intensive systems, we are faced with the need for capabilities that can reduce their time to market.http://www.acims.arizona.edu/PUBLICATIONS/PDF/SC213_Sarjoughian.pdf. These systems can benefit appreciably through the use of simulation for analysis during various phases of the system/software engineering lifecycle and especially in the design phase. Software engineering methodologies and tools such as Rhapsody [7] are aimed at developing and validating detailed specifications that are ready for implementation. To achieve software architecture simulation we must have the ability to model systems hierarchically and model component behavior. In this paper we will describe an approach that accounts for software design patterns in the context of simulation models. We present the implementation of the models in an extended DEVSJAVA environment and conclude with a discussion on the benefits of simulation modeling of software design. Models describe conceptual and formal specification of software prior to implementation and testing activities. In recent years software architecture has emerged as a crucial step in the design process of complex software systems. The need for software architecture specifications has brought forth tools and standards for documenting and analyzing them. These are transformation engines and generators that analyze aspects of software models in order to support automated mappings to software implementation artifacts. The use of MDE technologies incorporating DSMLs and model transformation in software design is motivated from the standpoint of domain driven software modeling and transition to software implementation. Without ...
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