Software Design and Evolution: Putting the Pieces Together
Sol J. Greenspan, Ph.D.
National Science Foundation
May 21, 2004
11 a.m. - 12 noon
Fuller Labs 311
Abstract
Designing software (or, more generally, software-intensive systems) to meet requirements is a challenging affair, because the requirements, the systems, and the environment are all constantly changing, both during development as well as throughout the system lifetime. While research on the analysis and synthesis of software-intensive systems is generally focused on a specific stage of software development, research is also needed to thread together these advancements into coherent approaches linking design to evolution. Past software design methodology has been based on a set of unreasonable goals/assumptions, such as: get the requirements before development begins, and capture them correctly, consistently and completely; make the system meet all the requirements before release; structure the system to anticipate change; and so on. This talk will take simple requirements through their lifetime to illustrate the issues and problems that need to be addressed. A design methodology and accompanying tools and techniques, built as a demonstration of concept to support design and evolution, will be described.
Biography
Dr. Sol J. Greenspan is a program director at the National Science Foundation (NSF) in the Directorate for Computer & Information Science and Engineering (CISE). Besides being the lead for NSF's activities in software engineering and programming language research, as well as related information technology research, this year he initiated a new program called the Science of Design, with a focus on software-intensive systems. He is best known internationally for his leadership role in establishing the research area called Requirements Engineering, including the founding of an international conference, a journal and an IFIP working group, all having "requirements engineering" in their names. Prior to joining NSF, Dr. Greenspan spent 14 years at GTE Labs in Waltham, Massachusetts, where he led computer science and software engineering R&D projects which produced publications, proof-of-concept prototypes and technology transfer activities to improve the company's business operations. A paper from his research won the most influential paper award from "10 ICSE's ago" (International Conf. on Software Engineering). Dr. Greenspan taught software and systems engineering courses recently at WPI and University College London, and he is a Research Affiliate at MIT. He received his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from the University of Toronto for work in the intersection of artificial intelligence and software engineering. His M.S. in Computer Science is from Rutgers University, and he has a B.S. in Mathematics from the University of Michigan.
Host
Prof. Michael A. Gennert
Refreshments will be served.
Last modified: September 26, 2006 13:39:56