Software Engineering (SU) group

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Software Engineering (SU) group Reidar Conradi et
al. IDI, NTNU, Nov. 16, 2006 (rev.
20.11.06) http//www.idi.ntnu.no/grupper/su/su-pr
es-16nov06.ppt http//www.idi.ntnu.no/grupper/su/
conradi_at_idi.ntnu.no
Reidar Conradi, 16 Nov. .06
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NTNU in short

• Established as NTH in 1905, now NTNU since 1996.
• Seven faculties, 53 departments.
• 20 000 students, 1700 scientific personnel.
• IME Faculty of IT, Mathematics and Electrical
  Engineering.
• IME five departments, incl. IDI Dept. of
  Computer and Information Science.
• IDI 50 teachers, 75 PhD fellows,10-12 PhD
  candidates and 150 master candidates per year.
  Over 100 taught topics.
• IDI Ten research groups, incl. SU group.

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SU Who we are what we do

• IDIs software engineering group
• Five faculty members Reidar Conradi, Tor
  Stålhane, Letizia Jaccheri, Monica Divitini, Alf
  Inge Wang.
• Four postdocs Jingyue Li, Ekaterina
  Prasolova-Førland, Sobah Abbas Petersen,
  Carl-Fredrik Sørensen.
• 17 active PhD-students, common theme empirical
  sw.eng. research
• 30 MSc-cand. per year
• Research-based education students participate in
  projects, project results are used in courses
• A dozen RD projects, basic and industrial, in
  all our research fields industry is our lab.
• Half of our papers are based on empirical
  research, and 25 are written with international
  co-authors.

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Teachers (1) prof. Reidar Conradi

• Born in Oslo, 1946
• MSc (1970) and PhD (1976) from NTNU
• At SINTEF 1972-75, later at NTNU
• Interests software quality and process
  improvement, CBSE/COTS/OSS, distributed systems,
  versioning.
  
• Projects mostly in SU group

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Teachers (2) prof. Tor Stålhane

• Born in Skien, 1944
• MSc (1970) and PhD (1988) from NTNU
• At SINTEF 1970-2000, prof.II at UiS since 1997,
  at NTNU since 1 Oct. 2000
• Interests software quality (especially safety
  and reliability), process improvement, industrial
  development, data analysis (statistics) and
  empirical methods
• Projects SPIKE/EVISOFT, WebSys, BUCS, ...

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Teachers (3) prof. M. Letizia Jaccheri

• Born in Pisa, 1965
• MSc (1988) in Pisa, PhD (1994) in Torino
• Politecnico di Torino 1991-97, NTNU since 1997
• Interests empirical software engineering,
  software architecture, OSS/COTS, software and
  art, software engineering education
• Projects E3, INCO (past), Simula Research Lab,
  software engineering education, CRIT

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Teachers (4) prof. Monica Divitini

• Born in Tirano, Italy, 1964
• MSc (1991) in Milano, PhD (1999) in Aalborg
• University of Milano 1994-97, NTNU since 1997,
  first as a CAGIS postdoc 1997-99
• Interests CSCW, community-ware, mobile
  technology for education.
• Projects CO2 Lab, MOTUS and MOTUS2 (NTNU
  LIKT-program), projects with Telenor RD, ASTRA
  (EU), FABULA (NFRs VERDIKT-program).

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Teachers (5) dr. Alf Inge Wang

• Born in Levanger, 1970
• BSc (1993) HiST, MSc (1996) NTNU, researcher at
  NTNU in 1996, PhD March 2001
• Interests Software architecture, agents/XML,
  configuration management, process modelling, XP,
  mobile technology for work support. Also music,
  football and family life.
• Projects (past) ESERNET (EU), CAGIS, MOWAHS
• Thesis Agent-based process support

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SU motivation

• Software essential in many important societal
  activities.
  50-60,000 system developers in Norway many
  without formal SW education. Still many
  challenges wrt. software quality and delivery on
  time and budget cf. US Standish report, 1995,
  cited in PITAC, 1999, on projects for tailored
  software
• 31 stopped before finish, 81 bill. loss/year
  (1 of GNP!)
• 53 have serious overruns (189 average), 59
  bill. /year
• Some challenges
• Web-systems Manage time-to-market (TTM) vs.
  reliability?
• Component-based development (OSS, COTS) quality,
  risks
• Business critical systems
• How do software systems evolve over time, cf.
  Y2K?
• What is empirically known about software products
  and processes?
• How can small companies carry out systematic
  improvement?
• How to perform valid sw.eng. research in a
  university
  -- by student projects and
  having industry serving as a lab?

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Public project success factors (1)

• However, the critical 12 factors are the softer
  ones ?
• Effective project planning
• Effective project cost estimating
• Effective project measurements
• Effective project milestone tracking
• Effective project quality control
• Effective project change management
• Effective development processes
• Effective communications
• Capable project managers
• Capable technical personnel
• Significant use of specialists
• Substantial volume of reusable materials
• See Capers Jones Government Software Projects
  Rank High in Major Critical Success Factors,
  Crosstalk, Jan. 2002, p. 19 (factors taken from
  own 1995 book), www.stsc.hill.af.mil/crosstalk/200
  2/01/jones.pdf.

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General project failure factors (2)

• Why do projects fail so often? - the most common
  12 factors ?
• Unrealistic or unarticulated project goals
• Inaccurate estimates of needed resources
• Badly defined system requirements
• Poor reporting of the project's status
• Unmanaged risks
• Poor communication among customers, developers,
  and users
• Use of immature technology
• Inability to handle the project's complexity
• Sloppy development practices
• Poor project management
• Stakeholder politics
• Commercial pressures
• See Robert N. Charette Why software fails -
  continued (part 2), IEEE Spectrum, 42(9)42-49,
  Sept. 2005, see http//www.spectrum.ieee.org/sep05
  /1685/2 with over 30 failed projects in software
  hall of shame.

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Research fields of SU group (1)

• Software Quality reliability and safety,
  software process improvement, process modelling
• Software Architecture CBSE with COTS/OSS,
  evolution
• Co-operative Work learning, awareness, mobile
  technology, project work
• What is important for us
• Empirical methods and studies in industry and
  among students, experience bases.
• Software engineering education partly
  project-based.
• Tight cooperation with Simula Research
  Laboratory/UiO and SINTEF, 15-20 active
  companies, Geomatikk, Telenor RD,
  Abelia/IKT-Norge etc.

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Research fields of the SU group
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SU research projects, part 1

• Supported by NFR
• CAGIS-2, 1999-2002 distributed learning
  environments, COO lab, Ekaterina
  Prasolova-Førland (Divitini).
• MOWAHS, 2001-04 mobile technologies,
  Carl-Fredrik Sørensen (Conradi) coop. with DB
  group.
• INCO, 2001-04 incr. and comp.-based development,
  Parastoo Mohagheghi at Ericsson (Conradi) with
  Simula/UiO.
• WebSys, 2002-05 web-systems reliability vs.
  time-to-market, Sven Ziemer and Jianyun Zhou
  (Stålhane).
• BUCS, 2003-06 business critical software, Jon A.
  Børretzen, Per T. Myhrer and Torgrim Lauritsen
  (Stålhane and Conradi).
• SEVO, 2004-2007 software evolution, Anita Gupta
  and Odd Petter N. Slyngstad (Conradi), with
  Statoil-IT.
• SPIKE, 2003-05 industrial sw process
  improvement, Finn Olav Bjørnson (Conradi) with
  Simula/UiO, SINTEF, Abelia, and 10 companies -
  successor of SPIQ and PROFIT.
• EVISOFT, 2006-10, empirically-driven process
  improvement, Geomatikk, 10 companies, Simula,
  SINTEF (two PhD students).
• NorskCOSI, 2006-2008 OSS in European companies,
  IKT-Norge and three companies, C.-F. Sørensen,
  Øyvind Hauge (Conradi).

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SU research projects, part 2

• IDI/NTNU-supported
• Software safety, 2002-06 Siv Hilde Houmb
  (Stålhane).
• Component-based development, 2002-06 OSS survey,
  Jingyue Li (Conradi). Now extended, coop. with
  prof. Liu at BJUT in 2005-2007.
• CRIT Creative methods in Education/software and
  art, 2003-4 (NTNU) novel educational practices,
  no PhD, Jaccheri at IDI w/ other dept.
• MOTUS and MOTUS2, 2002-2006 (NTNU), pervasive and
  cooperative computing, Birgit R. Krogstie
  (Divitini), Telenor RD.
• Supported from other sources
• ESE/Empirical software engineering, 2003-06 (SU
  funds) open source software, Thomas Østerlie
  (Jaccheri).
• ESERNET, 2001-03 (EU) network on Experimental
  Software Engineering, no PhD, Fraunhofer IESE
  25 partners.
• Net-based cooperation learning, 2002-05 (HiNT)
  learning and awareness, COO lab, Glenn Munkvold
  (Divitini).
• ASTRA EU project on cooperation technology,
  2006-2009 one PhD student and one postdoc,
  Monica Divitini.

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Ex. New EVISOFT project Evidence-based Software
Improvement

• NFR industrial RD project, 2006-10. NTNU,
  SINTEF, UiO/Simula, Geomatikk. 3 PhD students
  (NTNU, UiO), 10 part-time researchers, 10 active
  companies. NFR funding 8 mill. kr/year.
• Project manager Tor Ulsund, Geomatikk.
• Builds on SPIQ (1996-99), PROFIT (2000-02), SPIKE
  (2003-2005)
• Help (facilitate) IT companies to improve, by
  pilot projects in each company e.g. on cost
  estimation and risk analysis, UML-driven
  development, agile methods, component-based
  software engineering (CBSE) coupled with
  quality/SPI efforts.
• Couple academia and industry win-win in profile
  and effect, by action research.
• Empirical studies in/across companies and with
  other projects
• General results Method book, reports and papers,
  experience clusters, shared meetings and seminars

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Ex. Project model in EVISOFT
Dissemination
Common projects (generalization)
Dissemination
Company project (pilot project)
Next company project
Act
Plan
Check
Do
Development/implementation project
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Ex. Possible CBSE work topics for a company in
EVISOFT project

• Get an overview of present products and
  processes?
• What are the new service-oriented architectures
  (SOA)?
• How to evolve old to new applications?
• What software components internal, outsourced,
  OSS, COTS?
• Guidelines to help evaluate, select and integrate
  components?
• Arbitrate requirements vs. available components?
• Decide proper increments?
• Risk management in all this?
• What are the relevant data size, defects, ?

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Ex. Possible error analysis topics for a company
in the EVISOFT project

• Plan E.g. analyze trouble reports to identify
  frequent trouble sources and possible causes and
  remedies. Are different systems having different
  trouble profiles, e.g. related to CBSE?
• Do Implement one or more remedies and follow up
• Check Did it help less defects?
• Act Change process to include new remedies and
  disseminate results.