Annual Report 1996 - Fraunhofer · 2020-03-07 · 12 Fraunhofer IESE Annual Report 1996 History The foundations of the experimental approach to software engineering were laid in the

IESE

Annual Report 1996

2 Fraunhofer IESE Annual Report 1996

© 1997 Fraunhofer IESE

Editorial board:Dr. Frank BomariusDr. Lionel BriandDr. Jean-Marc DeBaudDipl. Soz. Joachim Müller-Klink

Layout and setting:Dipl. Soz. Joachim Müller-Klink

Lithography and graphics:Fotosatz Burkhart GmbH,Kaiserslautern

Printing:Printec GmbH, Kaiserslautern

Photography:Fraunhofer IESE;Kuhn und Ziller Fotostudio,Kaiserslautern;IFA Bilderteam (cover page: Henseler, Steffl)University of Kaiserslautern

Imprint

Annual Report of theFraunhofer Institute forExperimentalSoftware EngineeringIESE1996

Fraunhofer Einrichtung fürExperimentelles Software Engineering

Sauerwiesen 6D-67663 Kaiserslautern

phone +49(0)6301/707-100fax +49(0)6301/707-200

e-mail: [email protected]: //www.iese.fhg.de

7Fraunhofer IESE Annual Report 1996

In early 1996, the Fraunhofer Institutefor Experimental Software Engineering(IESE) was founded in Kaiserslautern.Based on the vision that softwarecompetence will become increasinglycrucial to the business success of com-panies in most branches of industry,IESE's mission is to establish itself as aleading organization in applied soft-ware engineering research and tobecome a preferred partner for thetransfer of innovative software engi-neering technologies into industrialpractice.

The institute grew out of the success-ful Software Technology Transfer Ini-tiative at the University of Kaiserslau-tern (STTI-KL) which was founded in1993 under the sponsorship of theMinistry of Economic Affairs, Trans-portation, Agriculture, and Vinicultureof the State of Rhineland-Palatinate.Within one year, we achieved signifi-cant industrial support from compa-nies in all major branches of industry,established ourselves as a highly-rec-ognized applied research institute, andbecame an integral part of the infor-mation technology infrastructure inour home state of Rhineland-Palati-nate.

Experimental Software Engineeringemploys experiments as an instrumentfor software technology transfer.Based on the recognition that well-understood and quantitatively man-ageable software development andmaintenance processes need to becustomized to a company's specificbusiness goals and characteristics,new and innovative software tech-nologies need to be carefully evaluat-ed before being transferred into prac-tice. After transfer, they need to becontinuously optimized based onfeedback gained from measurement.

Foreword

The Fraunhofer IESE provides expertisenot only in a wide range of innovativesoftware engineering technologies,but also in approaches concerning thebuild up of industrial improvementprograms for continuous optimization(i.e. TQM, Kaizen) of software devel-opment processes. Areas of expertisemost sought after by industry in 1996included software process modelingand measurement as a prerequisite forbuilding up industrial improvementprograms. Furthermore, systematicinspection techniques and object-ori-ented architectural approaches werehighly demanded as a means forestablishing engineering disciplinewithin software development.

Major achievements in 1996 includedthe build-up of a highly qualified workforce of international standing, theacquisition of industrial projects fromcompanies covering all major branch-es of industry, and the establishmentof an international research reputa-tion. We would like to acknowledgethe active support we received fromthe Central Administration of theFraunhofer Gesellschaft e.V. inMunich, the University of Kaiserslau-tern, the State of Rhineland-Palati-nate, and our Advisory Board(Kuratorium).

This report is intended to provide youwith an overview of our research andtransfer work in 1996. Together withthe distinguished members of ourAdvisory Board we will attempt tocontinue this successful path over thecoming years.

Kaiserslautern, August 1997

Prof. Dr. Dieter Rombach



Contents

Professional Contributions- Lecturing Assignments at Universities 60- Committee Activities 60- Journal Editorships 60- Presentations 61

Scientific Publications- Articles in Journals 62- Conference Proceedings 63- Technical Reports 64- Presentations 65- Doctoral Theses 66- Diploma Theses 66- Project Theses 66

Awards 67

Events, Facts, and Photos- Chronicle 68- Opening of the Fraunhofer IESE 69- Events in Pictures 70- Media Coverage 72- Humor 73

The Fraunhofer Gesellschaft 74

Fraunhofer IESE Contact 76

Foreword 7

Profile of the Fraunhofer IESE- Vision and Mission 10- Transfer Approach 11- Customer Orientation 11- History 12- Perspective and Agenda 13

Competence in Research and Technology Transfer- Competence Areas 14- Collaborations 15- Offerings 15

Structure- A Matrix Organization 16- Organigram 17- Personnel 18- Budget 18- Advisory Board 19

Software Engineering Competence AreasResearch Mission 20Quality and Process Engineering 21- Quality Improvement and

Experience Factory 22- Quantitative Methods 24- Software Engineering Environments 26- Process Modeling & Analysis 28Innovative Software Engineering 31- Product Line Approaches 32- Reengineering and Maintenance 34- Cleanroom Software Engineering (A):

Systematic Development 36- Cleanroom Software Engineering (B):

Inspections 38- Requirements Engineering 40

Transfer ProjectsIndustrially-funded Projects 42Publicly-funded Projects 50

Research Network- National Cooperations 57- International Cooperations 57- Visitors hosted 58- Letters from Guest Scientists 59

Vision and Mission

Over the last decades, software hasbeen introduced into almost all high-tech products and services. None ofthem can function without softwareanymore. An increasing number offeatures of these products and ser-vices are implemented in software.Consequently, for the majority ofindustries, for trade, banking, andother service domains, competitive-ness and market success depend moreand more directly upon their softwareengineering competence.

Our vision is that software compe-tence will become the most valuableasset of all high-tech product and ser-vice branches. Such competence hasto be built up, managed, and continu-ously developed according to well-defined strategic goals. More andmore organizations will seek helpregarding methods and techniques toidentify, customize, continuouslyoptimize and strategically align theirsoftware engineering competence.


Profile of Fraunhofer IESE

The mission of the IESE is to establishitself internationally as one of the topaddresses both for researchers lookingfor collaboration in areas of appliedsoftware engineering research, andfor companies looking for help withtheir software engineering problems.

The Fraunhofer IESE will be a compe-tent partner in applied software engi-neering research and technologytransfer. In order to live up to thisexpectation, the IESE has to continu-ously monitor customers' needs andstrategic goals. It has to investigatethe most promising innovative soft-ware engineering techniques andmethods available, to develop theirapplicability for industrial-strengthenvironments, and, finally, to transferthem into industrial practice, thusbuilding up the software competencesought after by its customers.


Technology transfer according to theexperimental approach follows a threestep process.

• New promising technologies andmethods are drawn from a richbody of basic research results fromthe highly-respected Computer Sci-ence Department at the Universityof Kaiserslautern, the specialresearch institute (SFB 501), as wellas from research collaborationswith many other highly renownedresearch institutes world-wide.

• Next, the new technologies andmethods are experimentally evalu-ated in laboratory settings, intro-duced in carefully-selected pilotprojects, evaluated in industrial-strength environments, and contin-uously improved.

• Such validated technologies arethen disseminated as best practicesto a wider range of customers.

Transfer Approach

Since software development is a non-repeatable human-based endeavor, asingle standard software engineeringtechnology cannot fit all situations.We strongly believe that high-qualitysoftware can only be developed eco-nomically by using software engineer-ing technologies tailored to the specif-ic goals and characteristics of theparticular development project.

Consequently, software engineeringresearch and transfer need to be per-formed in an experimental context.Our experimental approach makes itpossible to experiment with the tech-nologies in use and thus helps to thor-oughly understand their weaknessesand strengths. Technologies can alsobe tailored to the goals and character-istics of particular projects and organi-zations and can be packaged togetherwith empirically-gained experience inorder to enhance their reuse potentialin future projects.

Customer Orientation

Our customers are companies frommany different branches, of any sizeand from a large number of countries.In order to service such a large varietyof customers, we have increased ourefforts in building up domain knowl-edge in key application areas such astelecommunications, automotive sys-tems, and banking/insurance/trade,formed a separate service center forsmall and medium-size companies,and hired scientists from foreign coun-tries to staff international customerprojects.


History

The foundations of the experimentalapproach to software engineeringwere laid in the Eighties at the Soft-ware Engineering Laboratory (SEL), aUS organization co-sponsored byNASA´s Goddard Space Flight Center,the Computer Sciences Corporation,and the University of Maryland. Theachievements within the SEL were rec-ognized with the 1st IEEE/SEI ProcessAchievement Award in 1994.

In 1992, Prof. Dr. Dieter Rombach, anactive SEL member, moved from theUniversity of Maryland to the Universi-ty of Kaiserslautern to head the newchair for (Experimental) Software Engi-neering in the Computer ScienceDepartment.

In 1993, he launched the SoftwareTechnology Transfer Initiative Kaisers-lautern (STTI-KL) which adapted theexperimental approach to the needsof German companies and performednumerous successful transfer projects.The STTI-KL was funded by the StateMinistry of Economic Affairs, Trans-portation, Agriculture and Vinicultureof Rhineland-Palatinate.

In 1995, the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaftdecided to incorporate the successfulSTTI-KL as a new Fraunhofer Institute.The Fraunhofer Institute for Experi-mental Software Engineering (IESE)was born.

The IESE is headed by Prof. Dr. DieterRombach. In January 1996, the insti-tute started with 14 members. As ofDecember 1996, it employed 33 sci-entists, 11 non-scientific staff and alarge number of students from theUniversity of Kaiserslautern.


Concrete next steps in realizing theinstitute’s strategy are:

• Further build-up and continuousimprovement of highly-demandedcompetences in– quality and process engineering

(quality improvement, quantita-tive and qualitative methods)and in

– innovative software productengineering approaches(inspections, product line devel-opment, requirement engineer-ing, reengineering and mainte-nance).

• Concentration on key applicationdomains (telecommunications,automotive systems, banking/insur-ance/trade).

• Build-up of independent servicecenters (SME center, training cen-ter).

• Foundation of Fraunhofer Centersin the USA and Asia.

• Intensification of research collabo-rations with international technol-ogy transfer and research&devel-opment Institutes.

Perspective and Agenda

The institute´s strategy is to establishitself as a leading international com-petence center in software engineer-ing. As of today

• we are coordinator and member ofISERN, the International SoftwareEngineering Research Network, aninternational network with seven-teen members,

• we maintain an international work-ing environment: about one fourthof our staff comes from abroad,

• we are attracting many well-known guest scientists who con-tribute significantly to the excel-lence of our institute,

• we are active in many conferencecommittees and editorial boards ofinternational journals.

We will continue and extend theseactivities.


Competence Areas

In order to satisfy the needs of ourcustomers, we have to build up, main-tain, and continuously develop a com-plementary set of competences,namely

• application domain competences• software engineering competences• software technology transfer com-

petences.

Application Domain Competences

Our current application domain com-petence knowledge is concentratedon telecommunications, automotivesystems, and banking/insurance/trade.

Competence in Researchand Technology Transfer

Software Engineering Competences

The following list provides brief defini-tions of our key technology compe-tences in Software Quality and ProcessEngineering:

• Quality Improvement and Experi-ence Factory ”Facilitate continuous learning andpersistent storage of developmentknow-how.”

• Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis ”Capture relevant developmentdata and analyze them.”

• Process Modeling ”Represent key business and soft-ware development processes.”

• Integrated Software EngineeringEnvironments ”Support all of the above.”

Key technology competences in Innov-ative Product Engineering are brieflydefined as follows:

• Requirements Engineering ”Improve the early phases of soft-ware development.”

• Product Line Approaches ”Structure domain and designknowledge as well as softwaredevelopment know-how in such away that it can be easily under-stood, changed, and reused acrossfamilies of systems.”

• Reengineering and Maintenance ”Redocument and transition legacysystems and manage long-livingsoftware systems.”

• Cleanroom Software Engineering ”Develop certifiable and reliablesoftware.”

Technology Transfer Competences

Transfer of advanced industrial-strength software engineering tech-nologies is the central task of theFraunhofer IESE. We therefore main-tain a transfer-oriented network ofcollaborations with technologyproviders, such as universities, withresearch and development depart-ments of large organizations, withproviders of tools that support ourtechnologies, and with strategic part-ners that otherwise support our work.

Competence gained from collabora-tion with these providers enables theIESE to conduct technology transferprojects with customers, i.e., the usersof our technology.

On the technology side, we have tomonitor the latest developments,identify promising technologies, andexperimentally evaluate and improvethem to create industrial-strengthtechnologies.

On the customer side, our compe-tences are to identify strengths andweaknesses of organizations, todefine strategic improvement goalswith our customers, to implementcontinuous improvement programs, toset up means to monitor progress ofthe changes introduced, and to cap-ture and store experiences made.

Offerings


Collaborations

The IESE conducts collaborations withtechnology providers, technology-transfer customers, and strategic part-ners. The overall goal is to identify,further develop, and put into indus-trial prac-tice software engineeringtechnology so as to increase the com-petence of our customers.

International Research

Among the international cooperationsin applied software engineeringresearch, the International SoftwareEngineering Research Network (ISERN)with about 20 sites in research andindustry plays a prominent role. ISERNis a forum for applied software engi-neering research with members fromEurope, America, Asia, and Australia.It maintains high-level contacts toleading international companies in theembedded systems domain such asAT&T, Motorola, Nokia, Ericsson, NTT,Matsushita, Hitachi, and Daimler-Benz.

Publicly-funded Collaborations

Collaborations exist with many pub-licly-funded consortia aimed at eithersoftware engineering technologyadvancement or dissemination of bestpractices. Publicly-funded projects canbe devoted to research and develop-ment as well as technology transfer.Often, additional bilateral industrially-funded collaborations result from per-forming these projects. Public projectsponsors include the Government ofthe State of Rhineland-Palatinate, theFederal Government of Germany, andthe European Commission.

Industrially-funded Collaborations

In the first year of its existence, theinstitute already developed 14 bilateralindustrial collaborations with leadingcompanies offering software-intensiveproducts, software-intensive servicesor software products. In addition, col-laborations exist with 12 industrialcompanies which are partially support-ed through publicly-funded projects.

The overall IESE approach is wellappreciated by all its customers. Thisis documented mainly by theirrenewed business (i.e., prolongationof contracts) and a strong increase inthe number and volume of industrial-ly-funded projects. The cooperationpartners of the Fraunhofer IESE rangefrom very large global players to verysmall companies. They can be roughlygrouped into four categories:

• Large national and internationalcompanies that seek help in theirmid- to long-term endeavor ofquality improvement in softwaredevelopment.

• Large national and internationalcompanies that can afford theirown R & D departments and thatsearch for competent researchpartners.

• Medium-size companies that wantto set up improvement programsbut are usually under very tightbudget and schedule constraints.

• Small companies that need ready-to-use, evaluated technologieswhich yield short-term return oninvestment.

For developers of software, we offer:

• the evaluation of software devel-opment practices,

• the construction of customizedquality improvement systems,

• the introduction and optimizationof engineering-based, state-of-the-art software development process-es,

• support towards development ofcertifiable software,

• preparation for certification.

For users of software, we offer:

• help in purchasing software,• independent support for monitor-

ing software development con-tracts.

For small and medium-size enterprises(SMEs) we offer individual assistanceand ”products” tailored specifically totheir needs on request.

Our services are offered by means of:

• goal-oriented transfer projects,• long-term strategic research and

development alliances,• consulting,• executive briefings,• continuous training and education,• studies and expert reports,• state-of-the-art surveys,• product evaluation,• prototypical tools.


Structure

A Matrix Organization

The structure of the Fraunhofer IESE isdesigned to optimally support appliedresearch and technology transfer pro-jects. In order to serve the differingneeds of our customers, we have toput together project groups in a veryflexible way. If necessary, we reorga-nize the groups to accommodate theneeds of the projects that change overtime. Therefore, the basic structure isa matrix organization. Through thematrix we bring together our softwareengineering competences on one side- provided by the Quality and ProcessEngineering (QPE) and Innovative Soft-ware Engineering Approaches (ISE)departments - and the applicationdomain know-how on the other side -provided by the Industrial QualityImprovement Projects (IQVP) depart-ment.

While QPE and ISE are maintainingand continuously improving the insti-tute’s technical competences, thedepartment for Industrial QualityImprovement Projects IQVP (Indus-trielle Qualitäts-Verbesserungs-Projek-te) and our fourth department, Cen-tral Services and Public Projects ZDÖP(Zentrale Dienste und Öffentliche Pro-jekte) are responsible for successfullyconducting industrially- and publicly-funded projects.

The IQVP department is the compe-tence center for application domainknow-how. ZDÖP adds competenceregarding the acquisition and man-agement of publicly-funded projects.Both ZDÖP and IQVP provide manpower for managing research andtransfer projects.

Research and technology transfer issupported by administrative and tech-nical groups and centers:

• Public Relations is concerned withmedia presence, the preparation ofprinted material about the insti-tute, and the organization of exhi-bitions.

• The Demonstration Center pro-vides on-line sample implementa-tions of tools, data, and other tan-gible results of our research andproject work.

• The Training and Education Centerimproves the training and consult-ing competence of all members ofthe institute. It develops the insti-tute’s human resources by organiz-ing training and seminars, and itassists in creating professionaltraining materials for our cus-tomers.

• The Consulting Center for Smalland Medium-Size Enterprises(SMEs) is specifically designed totake care of the particular needs ofsmall and medium-size companies.Industrial transfer projects are con-ducted here, like in IQVP, but forSMEs.

The European Public Projects andNational Public Projects groups withinZDÖP are concerned with applicationsfor public funds and with the specialterms of conducting such projects.

The groups within IQVP address thespecial needs of different customergroups. Customers that develop soft-ware as an add-on secondary productcan be grouped into those who buildsystems that strongly rely on softwareand those who provide software de-pendent services. Due to the relativlylarge number of customers from thetelecom domain, we have a particulargroup to support them. The SoftwareProviders Group handles projects withcompanies that develop software astheir primary product.


Organigram

Innovative Soft-ware EngineeringApproaches Dept.(ISE)Dr. DeBaud

Industrial QualityImprovementProjects Dept.(IQVP)Dr. Bomarius

Cleanroom

Prof. Dr. Rombach

RequirementsEngineering

Dr. DeBaud

Product LineApproaches

Dr. DeBaud

Reengineering& Maintenance

Dr. DeBaud

Software-IntensiveProducts

Dr. Bomarius

Software-IntensiveServices

Dr. Bomarius

Telecommu-nicationServices

Dr. Schwarz

SoftwareProviders

Dr. Bomarius

Quality & ProcessEngineering Department(QPE)Dr. Briand

Quality Improvement &Experience Factory

Dr. Briand

QuantitativeMethods

Dr. El Emam

ProcessModeling

Dr. Briand

SoftwareEngineeringEnvironment

Dr. Rösch

NationalPublic Projects

Dr. Ruhe

Administration

Halle

Library &Publication Service

Dr. Ruhe

Technical Service

Huber

EuropeanPublic Projects

Dr. Ruhe

Central Services & Public ProjectsDepartment(ZDÖP)Dr. Ruhe

Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering IESE Prof. Dr. D. Rombach

External RelationsDepartment

(EB)Prof. Dr. Rombach

Acquisition

Prof. Dr. Rombach

Public Relations

Müller-Klink

DemonstrationCenter

Dr. Rösch

Education &Training Center

Eberle

ConsultingCenter for SMEs

Prof. Dr. Rombach

Contact OfficeUniversity ofKaiserslautern

Prof. Dr. Rombach


Personnel

As a result of the number of acquiredprojects, the Fraunhofer IESE hasalmost doubled its staff during its firstyear. Our demanding requirementsforced us to hire leading experts frommany different nationalities, thus cre-ating an extraordinary multinationalculture at the institute.

Based on the very encouraging accep-tance of the Fraunhofer IESE by indus-tries, we predict a steady growth ofthe institute to a staff of approximate-ly 120 in the year 2000.

Budget

1996 1997 1998 1999 2000

50 actual originally planned

to be expected

100

150

11 2 0 1 1430 11 3 23 6738 15 5 30 8844 17 7 38 106

Staf

fSc

ient

ists

Infr

astr

uctu

reG

uest

Sci

entis

tsSt

uden

ts a

nd e

mpl

oyee

s

Sum

01.01.199631.12.1996Plan 1997Plan 1998

Income

Industrially-funded projects

Publicly-funded projects

Other Income

Public Grant (State of Rhineland-Palatinate)

TDM

1 443

403

382

1 612

3 840

%

37.6

10.5

9.9

42.0

100.0

Investments

Income

Industrially-& Publicly-funded projects

Public Grant (State of Rhineland-Palatinate)

TDM

82

2 698

2 780

%

2.9

97.1

100.0

Expenses

Personnel

Miscellaneous

TDM

2 700

1 140

3 840

%

70.3

29.7

100

Expenses TDM

2 780

%

100


Advisory Board

Prof. Dr. Victor BasiliInstitute for Advanced Computer ScienceDepartment of Computer ScienceUniversity of MarylandUSA

Prof. Dr. Jürgen NehmerDepartment of Computer Science,University of Kaiserslautern,also: Member of the German ScienceCouncil (Deutscher Wissenschaftsrat)

Prof. Dr. Ernst DenertChairman, sd&m GmbH & Co. KGsoftware design & managementalso: Vice-President of the GermanComputer Society ”GI” (Gesellschaftfür Informatik)

Dietmar Freigang IS DirectorAllianz-Lebensversicherung AG

Günther PlappTechnical Director, K3/LERobert Bosch GmbH

Prof. Dr. Eckart RauboldDirector, Technology Center DarmstadtDeutsche Telekom AG

Brigitte KlemptRepresentative of the Ministry of Edu-cation, Science and Continuous Edu-cation of the State of Rhineland-Palatinate

Dr. Ulrich MüllerRepresentative of the Ministry of Eco-nomic Affairs, Transportation, Agricul-ture and Viniculture of the State ofRhineland-Palatinate

Research

Industry

Government

Vice-Chairman of the Advisory Board

Chairman of the Advisory Board


Research Mission

Our customers face real, large-scalequality, productivity and time-to-mar-ket problems within their softwaredivisions. They expect us to performquick root cause analyses, proposeadequate techniques, methods, andtools to mitigate the identified prob-lems, and help integrate them intotheir software and business processesas manageable competences.

This implies that such technologiesshould be rigorously evaluated withinrealistic conditions and properly pack-aged. In addition, once transferred,these technologies must be tightlycontrolled and managed for optimaluse. That is, we must ensure thatthese technologies are properly usedwith respect to: conformance tointended use, resource expenditures,organization issues, and qualityobjectives.

The core technical contribution of theIESE is to empirically characterize, vali-date, and package innovative softwaretechnologies. To address this goal, theIESE core technical competences arestructured around two highly synergis-tic departments: Quality and ProcessEngineering (QPE) and Innovative Soft-ware Engineering (ISE).

The primary mission of Quality and Process Engineeringis to provide support for the transferof software technologies through rig-orous evaluation, quality control, andquantitative management.

The primary mission of Innovative Software Engineering is to develop a portfolio of effectiveand innovative software engineeringmethods and techniques for carefulevaluation and transfer purposes.

Technical CompetenceAreas


Quality and Process Engineering

In order to monitor, evaluate, andcontrol the transfer and tailoring ofsoftware technologies (e.g., tools,processes) into an organization, oneneeds to be able to measure thestrengths and benefits of such a tech-nology, but also its costs and inherentrisks. In addition, in order to deter-mine how to integrate a new technol-ogy into current practice, one needsto understand the software develop-ment processes and technologies inplace, understand their weaknessesand strengths. Thus, the potentialgains and dangers of a new technolo-gy can, in context, be preciselyassessed and quantitatively investigat-ed.

Once transferred, any technologyneeds to be monitored, controlled,and managed in order for it to beeffective from a quality and productiv-ity standpoint. In order to do so, theresource consumption and qualityachievements of a technology need tobe quantitatively modeled and linkedto contextual and human factors.

To address the issues mentionedabove, the QPE department is com-posed of four interacting and comple-mentary groups:

• Quantitative Methods (QM)QM focuses on ways to buildquantitative models aimed at themonitoring, evaluation, and predic-tion of software quality and pro-ductivity attributes such as produc-tivity, maintainability, reliability, andrelated software risks. This impliesthe use of measurement, statisticalmodeling, and many other experi-mental techniques.

• Process Modeling (PM)PM aims at providing methods forprocess elicitation, modeling, andanalysis so that specific processweaknesses and strengths may beidentified. This is expected to natu-rally drive process improvement ini-tiatives. We put particular empha-sis on developing techniques tocope with real-scale, high-complex-ity processes and organizations.

• Quality Improvement and Experi-ence Factory (QE) QE aims at supporting the packag-ing of software knowledge (e.g.,process models, productivitymodels) within an organizationand facilitate its reuse. Thedissemination and proper reuse ofsoftware knowledge requires theprovision of facilities to store allforms of knowledge, retrieve andtailor it. In addition, QE providesstrategies, infrastructures, andmethods to support long-termcumulative, organizationallearning.

• Software Engineering Environ-ments (SEE) SEE aims at providing automatedsupport for all the activitiesdescribed above, ensuring thatthey can be implemented at mini-mal cost.

We place particular emphasis ondeveloping solutions that are techni-cally sound, optimal in their specificcontext of application, and tailored toour customers' expectations andneeds.

Dr. Lionel Briand, Department Head


Description

This group focuses on the followingissues:

•� Designing an organizational strate-gy and structure of an experiencefactory in such a way that it can betailored to the specific needs ofthe respective software organiza-tion.

�•� Designing software engineeringexperience bases with adequateknowledge representation and effi-cient knowledge base technology.

• Identifying strategies for feedingand updating a software engineer-ing experience base as well asretrieving information from it. Suchstrategies should be suitable forvarious application contexts, e.g.,the planning and monitoring ofprojects, the à posteriori analysis ofprojects, and the à priori definitionof measurement programs andprocess improvement plans fornew projects.

Scientific Issues

• Which activities, roles, and compe-tences are necessary to opera-tionalize an experience factory,especially, what are their relation-ships, which products are accessed,and what are the respective infor-mation flows? Given the specificrequirements and preferences of asoftware organization, to whichdegree can the respective activitiesbe automatically supported?

•� What should be the structure of asoftware engineering experiencebase, e.g., what information andexperiences should be stored, howshould they be captured and mod-eled? For instance, how should

Quality Improvement and Experience Factory Group

One of the fundamental premises ofexperimental software engineering isthat we wish to understand andimprove software quality and produc-tivity. This must be based on empiricalevidence and project experience. Evenfor small software organizations, largeamounts of information can be builtup over the years (e.g., expertise, pro-ject data, lessons learned, qualitymodels). For such information to beusable, it needs to be modeled, struc-tured, generalized, and stored in areusable form in order to allow theeffective retrieval of relevant artifacts.A continuous build-up of knowledgerequires an approximate organization-al structure which must be integratedwith the software development orga-nization. Such an organizational struc-ture dedicated to the acquisition andreuse of experience together with itsunderlying experience base technolo-gy is referred to as an experience fac-tory.

Goal

We define an efficient organizationalstrategy and structure. This is theoperational backbone of the experi-ence factory in a software organiza-tion. In addition, we are developingnew technologies to capture, model,store, generalize, retrieve, integrate,and update software engineeringknowledge. These technologies mustbe combined within dedicated experi-ence bases and tailored to the needsof the respective software organiza-tions.


experience regarding a particulardevelopment technology (e.g.,inspection, design) be modeledand made reusable?

• How should the representation,update, and retrieval of relevantinformation be supported to dealwith the cognitive complexity of alarge and diverse corporate infor-mation base? For instance, whenplanning a measurement program,what artifacts (models, measures,etc.) can be reused from previousmeasurement experiences?

• How can different kinds of experi-ences (i.e. the objects to be storedin the experience base) as well asdifferent kinds of representationsof specific experiences (e.g., ameasurement plan described ondifferent levels of abstraction;more or less vague knowledge col-lected as lessons learned duringthe introduction of a new soft-ware engineering technology) bemade available and combined inan effective way that also consid-ers the respective context of theactual user?

•� Which kinds of candidate tech-nologies for supporting the imple-mentation of an experience basedo exist and how do they relate toone another? What are theirrespective costs and benefits? Howdo they correspond to the specificrequirements of an industrial soft-ware organization?

�Practical Use

Such software engineering knowledgebases can be used

• to support project managementdecisions, e.g., which technologyto use on a project, and

Andreas Birk

Carsten Tautz

Christiane Gresse

• to identify and drive structural andtechnological changes in a soft-ware organization, e.g., identifyhigh payoff areas for improvement.

As soon as the necessary knowledgehas been captured, identified, formal-ized, and represented (e.g., as prod-ucts, models, lessons learned), anexperience base can be constructed.Thus, the knowledge acquired in suchprograms can be made a corporateasset and becomes widely availableacross the organization.

Cooperation

Research Cooperation:– Software Engineering Laboratory (SEL), Uni-

versity of Maryland, College Park, Maryland

(USA);

– Center for Learning Systems and Applica-

tions (LSA), University of Kaiserslautern,

Kaiserslautern (D);

– Federal University of Santa Catarina,

Florianopolis, (Brazil)


For software organizations to improvetheir efficiency and effectiveness, theyhave to be able to measure theirprocesses and products. This mea-surement can be used to characterizeand baseline their processes and prod-ucts, to evaluate new technologies, toidentify and track improvements, andto monitor and control projects. Thisapproach is referred to as measure-ment-based improvement.

Goal

The general goal of the QuantitativeMethods Group is to develop tech-nologies that facilitate measurement-based process and product improve-ment.

Description

This group is involved in the followingtechnology transfer and researchareas:

• setting up measurement programsin industry following the GQM par-adigm and generalizing from theseexperiences to identify critical suc-cess factors for setting up a mea-surement program,

• empirical evaluation of softwareproducts through the analysis offield data and through field andcontrolled experiments,

• developing techniques for the mea-surement, evaluation, and controlof software inspections through theanalysis of field data and throughfield and controlled experiments,

• developing and evaluating model-ing techniques for software costestimation,

• developing more modeling tech-niques for other topics.

Scientific Issues

The Quantitative Methods Groupidentified the following areas as sub-jects of future research activities:

• Definition and Validation ofProduct Measures“Which measures are most usefulfor understanding the structure ofsoftware and for managing itsquality?”

• Inspections“What criteria should be used todecide whether to reinspect a soft-ware artifact?” and “How do weassess the effectiveness and effi-ciency of software inspections?”

• Cost Estimation Models“Which modeling techniques pro-vide the greatest cost estimationaccuracy?” and “How can weincorporate local expert knowledgeeffectively into cost estimationmodels?”

• Data Analysis“Which machine learning and sta-tistical data analysis techniques aremost suitable for solving particularproblems?” and “How can weimprove upon existing data analy-sis techniques for use with soft-ware engineering data?”

Practical Uses

• Product evaluationWe have built models to predictthe error proneness of softwarecomponents from measures of thesystem design, and we have com-pared object-oriented design docu-ments built using different design

Quantitative Methods Group


guidelines to see which guidelinesyield less maintenance effort.

• Measurement, evaluation, andcontrol of software inspectionsWe have built models to estimatehow many defects are remaining ina document after an inspection tohelp decide whether it ought to bereinspected, and we have devel-oped a benchmarking approachwhereby the performance ofinspections can be compared tothat of companies that alreadyhave implemented inspections suc-cessfully.

• Cost estimationFor one organization that had asmall historical data set, we devel-oped a cost estimation model thataugmented this data with theknowledge of experienced projectmanagers, and in another projectwe developed an effort estimationmodel using functional size mea-sures by combining machine learn-ing techniques and statistical tech-niques.

Cooperation

Research Cooperation:– European Software Institute, Bilbao (E);

– Software Technology Transfer Finland,

Espoo (SF);

– GrafP Technologies Inc., Montreal, Quebec

(CAN),

– Centre de Recherche Informatique de

Montreal, Montreal, Quebec (CAN);

– Software Engineering Institute (SEI),

Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh,

Pennsylvania (USA);

– Software Engineering Laboratory (SEL),

University of Maryland, College Park,

Maryland (USA)

Dr. Khaled El Emam, Group Leader

Dr. John Daly

Isabella Wieczorek

Pierfrancesco Fusaro

Industrial Cooperation:– Daimler-Benz AG, Forschung und Technik,

Ulm (D);

– Daimler-Benz Aerospace DASA, Bremen (D);

– Robert Bosch GmbH, Frankfurt/Main (D);

– sd&m GmbH & Co. KG, Munich (D)


Software Engineering EnvironmentGroup

Software engineering involves manydifferent complex activities and arti-facts concerning both product (e.g.documents, code) and process (e.g.design and inspection activities andtheir relationships) engineering.To keep the software engineeringprocess under control and efficient,information about activities and prod-ucts must be entered, stored, andmaintained in computer-based envi-ronments. Software engineering envi-ronments help engineers deal with theinherent complexity of software engi-neering by providing computer-basedtools for all areas of software engi-neering in an integrated environment.This includes tools for all aspects ofproduct and process engineering.

Goals

The software engineering environ-ments group addresses tool-relatedaspects that are relevant in the con-text of the software developmentprocess. The following specificdomains are target goals:

• Computer-Aided Software ProcessElicitation:Support improvement programs byunderstandable, trackable and easi-ly modifiable representations of thesoftware process.

• Computer-Aided Software ProcessMeasurement and MeasurementPlanning:Support integration of processmodeling, measurement and goal-oriented measurement planning.

• Integrated Software Process Man-agement Support:Support the integrated manage-

ment of software process models,measurement plans, measurementdata, and analysis results.

• Evaluation of Software EngineeringEnvironments:Analyze existing software engineer-ing environments, technologiesand architectures, focused on soft-ware development process andprocess improvement aspects.

• Prototyping of Software Engineer-ing Environments:Build prototypes of tools or envi-ronments to gain more insight inpromising concepts and to helpsupport and improve the work inindustrially/publicly-funded projects.

Description

The QPE/SEE group tries to build upcompetence in the area of softwareengineering environments. Thereforethe group builds concrete prototypesof environments and maintains knowl-edge about Software EngineeringEnvironments in general. The groupalso acts as central coordinator withrespect to tool development in theinstitute.

The QPE/SEE is involved in the follow-ing specific activities:

• SpearmintPrototype supporting SoftwareProcess Elicitation, Analysis, Reuse,and Measurement in an integratedenvironment.In the Spearmint project, a proto-type for comprehensive softwareprocess support is being devel-oped. The need for such a newproduct was caused by the lack ofsupport given by existing tools forelicitation and analysis of softwareprocesses. The focus of theSpearmint project is to support


software process elicitation, mea-surement planning, analysis andreuse. The Spearmint prototypeprovides multiple configurableviews on the software process inan integrated and comprehensiveenvironment. The environmentincludes features like database andquerying support, change tracking,and hypermedia support.

• Demo-Lab/Tool SuiteTool evaluation and demonstrationplatform.Web-based environment that letsusers easily access tools, get infor-mation about them (i.e. descrip-tion, experience reports), andguides the user through a demon-stration session, giving a quick andpractical overview about currentstate-of-the-practice in this field.

• Demo-Lab/Hyperteaching Environ-mentMulti-media environment fordemonstration of experimentalsoftware engineering principlesand of IESE's technology approach.

Scientific Issues

• Computer-Aided Software ProcessElicitationHow can information about a soft-ware process (e.g. models, plans,analysis results) be represented inan understandable way? How canwe support the interactionbetween humans and a softwareprocess support tool efficiently?

• Computer-Aided Software ProcessMeasurement and MeasurementPlanningHow to integrate measurementinto process models and how tonavigate effectively process models,measurement plans, and measureddata?

• Integrated Software Process Man-agement SupportWhich are the right techniques forsupporting process model reuse?How can we integrate facilities forinformation tracking, navigation,querying, and versioning into acomprehensive environment?

• Evaluation of SEEsWhat are reliable/objective evalua-tion criteria?

• PrototypingWhich technologies are appropri-ate for rapid prototyping?

Practical Use

Process improvement can only be effi-ciently achieved in practice if it is wellsupported by tools. Software engi-neering environments provide thebasis for gaining intellectual controlover processes and products.

The SEE group provides some of thesetools through the Spearmint project.The Spearmint prototype is targetedto be a product which can be used byour scientists in actual industrially andpublicly-funded projects.

Besides the practical use in projects,the Spearmint project also provides adefined architecture and integratedframework for the building of soft-ware engineering environments.Therefore, Spearmint represents anintegration framework for tools whichare developed at our institute.

Cooperation

– University of Kaiserslautern,

Kaiserslautern (D);

– University of New South Wales,

Sydney (AU)

Dr. Peter Rösch, Group Leader

Ralf Kempkens

Dr. Richard Webby

Jörg Zettel


Process Modeling & Analysis Group

Software development organizationsoperate according to a set of complexprocesses like specification, design,coding, testing, and configurationcontrol. The introduction of new tech-nologies or methods in this environ-ment often causes severe problems.One of the major reasons is the lackof explicit information about the actu-al processes and their interrelation-ships.

Visualization of processes is neededfirst of all to understand and then tobetter control the change of softwaredevelopment organizations and topredict the performance of projects.This visualization is achieved by mod-eling the processes descriptively. Simu-lation of those models allows theobservation of their behavior in differ-ent contexts at low cost. Analysis ofthe models uncovers problems in soft-ware development.

Process modeling provides a necessaryprerequisite to better understand,control, manage, and change soft-ware development processes. Overall,the explicit process models representan important part of an organiza-tion's experience and demonstrate itsability to handle complex tasks.Process models are therefore a basicpart of the documentation which isrequired for ISO 9000 certification.Availability of such documentationand fidelity to the processes executedare an important quality aspect in theassessment of an organization.

Goals

The general goal of the Process Mod-eling and Analysis Group is to provideaccurate models of software develop-ment processes for use in process

improvement. This consists of the fol-lowing elements:

• ModelingMaking software industry process-s explicit, defining and validatingconceptual frameworks for processmodeling, providing a set ofknowledge acquisition techniquesfor elicitation of process informa-tion, defining a process modelingmethodology, and evaluating toolsfor process modeling.

• AnalysisAnalyze the process models bothquantitatively and qualitatively inorder to identify where processimprovement is necessary, comparecandidate process models for selec-tion of best practice development.

• Process managementInnovative technology to store,retrieve, and tailor process knowl-edge.

Description

The Process Modeling Group isinvolved in the following technologytransfer and research areas:

• Modeling industrial developmentprocesses, including the evaluationof applied process modeling tech-nology.

• Development of a conceptualschema that helps capture all rele-vant aspects of processes withinimprovement programs, whichincludes the transformationbetween different process model-ing languages.

• Specifying, testing, and evaluatingprocess modeling tools for descrip-tive process modeling.


• Examination of mechanisms forcoping with process variants andversions, which includes project-specific tailoring of process mod-els.

• Definition of an operationalprocess modeling method.

• Development of a WWW-basedprocess guide, which is a structureand navigation mechanism to rep-resent an organization’s processmodels and to support developersin their daily work and which helpsthem achieve process confor-mance.

Scientific Issues

The Process Modeling and AnalysisGroup identified the followingresearch fields as subjects of theirfuture research activities.

• Conceptual Model and Views ”Is there a canonical schema fordescribing development processesand what are useful variants in dif-ferent contexts?”

• Modeling Method ”What techniques are candidatesfor extending the portfolio of tech-nologies for process elicitation andprocess documentation?”

• Analysis”What project parameters influ-ence product quality and processattributes (e.g., timeliness, effort)and how can they be captured inprocess models?”

• Process Management”What are the requirements fordefining an instance of an experi-ence factory for process models?”

Practical Uses

Process modeling helps companies tounderstand the complex relationshipsin software development. Explicitprocess models support communica-tion among different roles (e.g., man-agers and developers) and help recon-cile differing views on the softwareprocess. They help project planning,identify causes for low product qualityor budget overrun, capture the experi-ence of an organization, fulfill require-ments for quality management (e.g.,ISO 9000-1), and support the imple-mentation of process change withinimprovement programs.

Cooperation:

Research Cooperation:– Daimler-Benz Forschung und Technik,

Ulm (D)

– Software Engineering Institute (SEI),


Pennsylvania (USA);


Kaiserslautern (D)

Industrial Cooperation:– Daimler-Benz Aerospace DASA, Bremen (D);

– Robert Bosch GmbH, Frankfurt/Main (D)

Ulrike Becker

Dirk Hamann

Dietmar Pfahl


Building of the Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering in Kaiserslautern

Location of the Contact Office of the Fraun-hofer IESE at the University of Kaiserslautern


• The Product Line Approachesgroup (PLA) helps organizations efficiently pro-duce systems when these sharemany similarities. These reuseapproaches encompass domainengineering as well as domain-spe-cific software architecture issues.

• The Software Maintenance andReengineering group (RM) tackles the multiple types of prob-lems that arise when a system hasbeen fielded and needs to bemaintained, redocumented, and/orrestructured.

The formation of the ISE departmentstarted later than the other IESEdepartments, hence by the end of1996 the ISE is still in the process ofdeveloping its portfolio of approaches,increasing staff and fostering itsexternal research relationships.

We put strong emphasis on creatingtight relationships with our customers.We fully appreciate both the difficul-ties but especially the opportunities ofsuch close collaborations, and we aredeveloping an internal culture to capi-talize on them. Finally, we havelearned that being practical and prob-lem-oriented is the key to our success.

Innovative Software Engineering

The primary mission of the IESEDepartment for Innovative SoftwareEngineering (ISE) is to develop a port-folio of effective and innovative soft-ware engineering methods and tech-niques for careful evaluation andtransfer purposes. To achieve this mis-sion, the ISE uses its customers’ exist-ing or anticipated needs as the princi-pal driver when monitoring the stateof the art, when selecting, adapting,and packaging promising approachesor, when required, developing newones.

In order to structure the department,our strategy has been to adopt anextended life-cycle coverage view. Thisview enables the construction of arich and wide-enough portfolio ofapproaches that can address a largevariety of the problems faced by ourcustomers as well as anticipatingemerging needs in our field ofendeavor. To reflect this strategy, wehave organized the department intofour complementary groups:

• The Requirements Engineeringgroup (RE) focuses on the extraction andspecification of what precisely asystem should do.

• The Cleanroom group (CR)addresses questions related to thesystematic, traceable developmentof requirements into a system,with certifiable attributes wheneverpossible. The CR group also tacklessoftware inspections. Inspectionsare aimed at the elimination oferrors and can basically be per-formed at any time within the life-cycle.

Dr. Jean-Marc DeBaud, Department Head


Product Line Approaches Group

There is tremendous customer pres-sure on the market for organizationsto develop multiple variants of theircore products, which should, ofcourse, be ever faster, cheaper and ofhigher quality. Historically, organiza-tions have responded to this challengeby organizing their products (andhence competencies) around productlines. There, variants are derived andmanufactured from a core structure,or architecture.

This pressure also affects the develop-ment of software systems and, onemay argue, is even more prevalenthere than in most other industries.The vision of product line approachesfor software systems (PL) is to enableorganizations to manage their soft-ware development efforts accordingto and benefiting from the PL princi-ples. PL’s principal goal is to manageproduct variability while minimizingeffort duplication and maintaining anopen and flexible central design.

Reuse is central to the idea of achiev-ing control over a PL. Successful reusetakes many forms, but it has becomeapparent that analysis and designreuse, beyond the more traditionalreuse of code, hold the key to achiev-ing systematic and widespread soft-ware reuse.

In order to reuse analysis and design,it is necessary to take a domain (thebusiness or scientific application areaof the product line) view of the world.A domain is an abstraction thatdenotes a set of similar problems thatare together deemed to share a num-ber of fundamental characteristics.Examples of such domain are Avionics,Accounting, Warehousing, and Guid-ance Systems.

Problems within a domain have oftenbeen solved over and over again.Hence, it may be possible, via adomain engineering process, toextract the specification and structureof one or more generic solutiondesigns covering the problems in thedomain. This almost always takes theform of a generic (reference) architec-ture specification. This reference archi-tecture then serves as the PL core(reuse infrastructure) with which sub-sequent system variants can be effi-ciently derived. The field of PLapproaches encompasses all the stepsand processes necessary to constructand use such a domain-based reuserepository.

Goals

The main goals of this group are:

• Technical Issues Understand better the practicalprocesses used and the problemsencountered behind constructing,using, and evolving over time PLfor software systems.

• Technology transfer issuesAcquire, analyze, and reuseprocess information relating to thedevelopment of PL within a varietyof organizations.

Both goals provide the enabling con-ditions for the successful transition ofthis type of domain-based intensivereuse within organizations. We usethe original DARPA-DSSA program asa foundation of our work in this area.

Description

In particular, this group focuses on:

• The development of a multi-stepprocess for introducing PL withinorganizations.


• Identifying the type of informationthat must be recorded when per-forming commonality analyzes aswell as the most-suited representa-tion notation.

• Which of the existing domainanalysis methods appears to workbest in practice, both from a scien-tific and a practical point of view?What types of information must becaptured and how? Does thisdepend on the particular domain?

• How to transition results of a do-main analysis to a fully-document-ed robust, flexible and highly cus-tomizable reference architecture.

• Understanding how variabledesigns can be expressed andunderstanding the usability aspectof the notation used. Is object-orientation suitable for this task?

• Maintaining traceability from thereference requirements down tothe executable components of thereference architecture.

• Managing the versioning problemcreated by using a reuse infrastruc-ture to develop a family of systemswhen the infrastructure itselfevolves rapidly.

• How can product line designs beevaluated?

Scientific Issues

• How can we provide a scientificfoundation for the notion ofdomain? This includes scoping,modeling, and representationissues that are difficult to resolvefully: There is some evidence tosuggest that different types ofdomains call for different answers.What are the key issues character-

Oliver Flege

izing domain types, and what con-sequences does this have?

• The level of complexity needed todrive the evolution of a PL isdependent on the maturity of thedomain and the quality of thedomain engineering leading to itsdefinition. When domain maturityis low or modeling was less thanoptimal, perhaps for economic rea-sons, deep changes are necessaryto the reference architecture. Weneed to find a way to tackle thissystematically.

Practical Use

PL for software systems is an architec-ture-centric, reuse-based softwaredevelopment approach. The focus ison capturing and exploiting an organi-zation’s core business competenceareas. To an organization subscribingto the approach, PL provides amethod to analyze and record theorganization’s competence as well asa process for constructing a softwarereuse environment that will be key tothe organization’s software develop-ment capabilities in that domain andhence to its competitiveness.

Cooperation

Research Cooperation:– Software Engineering Institute (SEI),


Pennsylvania (USA);

– Semantics Designs, Austin, Texas (USA);


Kaiserslautern (D)

Industrial Cooperation:– Ericsson Eurolab Deutschland GmbH,

Herzogenrath (D);

– Markant Südwest Software- und

Dienstleistungs GmbH, Kaiserslautern (D);

– Tecmath GmbH, Kaiserslautern (D);

– Variant-building Project: Six Local SMEs.


Reengineering and MaintenanceGroup

A large part of today’s programmertime is spent maintaining legacy sys-tems. It is estimated that 40 to 70 %of software development organizationcosts are spent on maintenance.

Indeed, successful software systemshave a long lifetime of modifications.These are often essential to compa-nies' business. However, unless specialcare is taken, the quality of a softwaresystem (modularity, cohesion of itscomponents, understandability, ...)decreases and the cost of mainte-nance increases dramatically.

Two strategies can help correct thissituation:

• Better maintenance practice:Establishing practices to reducesystem degradation.

• Redocumentation:A major portion of the large main-tenance effort is spent on under-standing the existing program andthe data manipulated.

Within this context, helping maintain-ers preserve the quality of legacy sys-tems can be achieved by helping themto better understand the legacy sys-tems and thus enable them to predicthow proposed changes to serviceswould impact the system and couldlead to side effects.

Goals


• Better understand what constitutesa good practical system overviewfor a maintainer who has to under-stand and modify a system under

time pressure. In particular, shouldthis overview contain the structureand dynamic behavior of the sys-tem, contracts between its compo-nents, data view, etc. and in whatform.

• Understand what type of analysiscan suggest transformation to asystem which would improve itsmaintainability and would preserveother quality features.

• Study a number of specificapproaches and techniques to pre-serve the quality of a softwaresystem during maintenance:– change management– change request tracking

systems– measurements related to

changes– maintenance processes models– regression testing – version and configuration

management– scenario-based input analysis.

Each goal has a particular industrialperspective. It focuses on acquiring,analyzing, and reusing process infor-mation on the introduction of theseapproaches and techniques in anindustrial setting.

Group Focus


• Extracting architectural views of asystem– What are the components of

this system?– How do they relate?– What are the contracts (proto-

cols) which constrain the inter-action among components?

• Integrating and maintaining user'sinput on a partially-recovered


Practical Use

Provide an architectural description ofa system to support

– validation of change (did we breakor degrade the architecture?),

– analysis of scenarios of possiblefuture changes,

– testing, – creation of a model for a family of

systems in the same applicationdomain,

– identification of cloned code in asystem to reduce the size of asystem a maintainer has to overseeand reduce the number of placeswhere duplicated errors have to becorrected,

– identification of reusablecomponents from existing systemalong with the constraints on itsutilization.

Cooperation

Research Cooperation:– University of Stuttgart, Institute of

Computer Science, Stuttgart (D);

– Instituto per la Ricerca Scientifica e

Technologica IRST, Trento (I);

– Georgia Tech University, Atlanta,

Georgia, (USA);

– VTT Electronics, Oulu (SF);

Industrial Cooperation:– Tecmath GmbH, Kaiserslautern (D)

architecture. This user input is cru-cial, because semantic informationcan be gained which plays a role inthe organization of an architectureand cannot effectively be recov-ered otherwise.

• Integration of domain informationin architectural recovery tools.

• Extraction of data dependenciesand classification of system's vari-ables according to their role in thesystem as a complementary systemview.

• Identification of code which hasbeen duplicated, then slightlymodified. This code often leads tomaintenance problems, since whena bug is corrected the maintainerdoes not know how often this bughas been duplicated and whereelse it needs to be corrected.

• Creation of prediction models formaintenance efforts and program-ming guidelines derived from thepredicted efforts.

• Analysis of the structure of a sys-tem to suggest ways to performinformation hiding and separationof concerns.

Scientific Issues

• Which of the existing architecturaldescription languages expressesbest the structure, behavior andconstraints of an architecture, sothat it can be used and accepted inindustry?

• How can a domain model guidearchitectural recovery and how canarchitectural recovery tools con-tribute to the creation of such amodel?

Jean-Francois Girard

Minna Mäkäräinen


Cleanroom Software EngineeringGroup (A): Systematic Development

One of the goals of Software Engi-neering is the development of highsoftware quality within reasonabletime. Cleanroom provides one possi-ble path to reach this goal. It com-bines pragmatic process principleswith a sound theoretical basis to yieldsuccess in practice.

Cleanroom provides a completeprocess for the development of largesoftware systems in such a way thatthe quality and reliability of the soft-ware produced is under control andcertifiable. The process itself is com-prised of five core techniques thatprovide the engineering rigor and pre-cision necessary for achieving qualityresults. These techniques are:

– formal specification and design – incremental development – stepwise refinements of specifica-

tions into code – correctness verification of code– statistical quality certification.

Goals


• Develop a deeper knowledge onhow Cleanroom can be especiallytailored to the needs of softwareorganizations and what factorshave to be considered when intro-ducing Cleanroom.

• Develop models/procedures onhow the essentials of Cleanroom(core techniques) can be integratedinto existing development process-es, perhaps one by one.

Both goals provide the enabling con-ditions for the successful introductionof Cleanroom into organizations.

Group Focus


• Integrating Cleanroom with theobject-oriented developing para-digm. This includes ways for incre-mental development with objects,functional verification of object-ori-ented code, derivation of Clean-room models from object-orientedanalysis models, etc.

• Allowing for systematic supporteven for the very early phases ofsoftware projects. This entails theintegration of requirements engi-neering and requirements elicita-tion techniques into Cleanroom.

• Evaluating tools which support thecore techniques of Cleanroom inorder to assess their cost/benefitsand applicability.

• Running controlled experimentsand case studies in order to under-stand the restrictions and limita-tions of Cleanroom.

Scientific Issues

• How to generate usage modelsdirectly from the specification?

• How to adapt Cleanroom certifica-tion to platforms, operational usesand testing?

• How to incorporate domain-spe-cific information into the develop-ment approach?


Christian Bunse

Stefan Jungmayr

• How to make use of Cleanroomfor reengineering tasks? Thisincludes the mapping of Clean-room concepts onto reengineeringconcepts and process definitions byusing Cleanroom elements.

Practical Use

Cleanroom is a full-fledged systematicsoftware development process. Anysoftware organization integrating themajor Cleanroom concepts or adopt-ing the complete process can developtheir software with guaranteed relia-bility and hence is one capable ofkeeping their projects under intellectu-al control. The latter entails thatdevelopment control and product cor-rectness are concurrently maintained.

Cooperation

Research Cooperation:– Dycon Systems, Bethseda, Maryland (USA)

– Software Engineering Technology Inc. (SET),

Knoxville, Tennessee (USA);


Kaiserslautern (D);

– University of Tennessee, Knoxville,

Tennessee (USA);

Industrial Cooperation:– Q-Labs Software Engineering GmbH,

Kaiserslautern (D)


Cleanroom Software EngineeringGroup (B): Software Inspection

Despite important changes made tosoftware development practice sincethe term software engineering wascoined thirty years ago, software qual-ity deficiencies and cost overruns con-tinue to afflict the industry. One of themajor problems is that each of the dif-ferent steps found in today’s develop-ment life cycles is prone to introducenew defects. This is true from theproblem all the way to its codingaddressed by the system.

Software inspections, developed atIBM by Fagan in the early 1970s, canbe used to tackle this problem,though they are only being introducedvery slowly. Inspections enable thedetection and removal of defects aftereach process phase. In this way, up to80 percent of all software defects canbe identified and eliminated early dur-ing software development. Hence,inspections can have a resoundingeffect on reducing rework cost anddelivery time, because defects do notslip through various developmentphases. When defects do slip, it getsincreasingly expensive and time-con-suming to remove.

Cost and schedule reductions for typi-cal applications have been shown tobe on the order of 30 percent when agood inspection process is used. Inorder to be most beneficial, an inspec-tion should follow a well-definedprocess including three major steps:Defect detection, defect collection,and defect correction.

Throughout the defect detection andcollection step, a team of technicalpersonnel analyzes the software prod-uct with the help of a reading tech-nique for defects detection. They then

agree on a set of defects, thus elimi-nating false positives, and rank thefaults with respect to their severitylevel. Defect correction sees the prod-uct's author suitably eliminate thedefects.

Goals

The main goals of this group are to

• provide supporting techniques andtools for each single inspectionstep.

• introduce, perform, and analyzeexisting inspection techniqueswithin organizations.

Both goals allow practitioners andresearchers to identify the most suitedand tailored inspection approach forparticular organizations.

Group Focus

In particular, this group focuses on

• identifying and understanding thefactors that have an influence oninspections,

• performing controlled experimentsto find out how to tailor inspectiontechniques to a given contextwithin an organization,

• technical and tool support for thedefect detection steps in the formof well-defined, tailored readingtechniques,

• decision guidelines about which ofthe existing inspection techniquesappear to work best in practice,both from a scientific and a practi-cal point of view.


Scientific Issues

• There is an ongoing discussion inthe literature on whether or notdefect detection is a group activityand therefore should be conductedin meetings. There is evidence tosuggest that performing inspec-tions with meetings are as benefi-cial as performing inspectionswithout meetings. However, thisneeds further investigation and,more importantly, further valida-tion.

• Although inspection is considereda human-based technology, someof the steps may be supported bytools. The question is, to whatextent can a tool contribute toinspection success.

• Although inspections are clearlybeneficial because they can detectdefects early in the software devel-opment process, they also incurcosts. First, they have a delayingeffect within that process; second,some corrected defects may nothave been defects proper; andthird, new defects may be inserted.All three cost drivers need to bebalanced against the benefits ofinspection to clearly understandthe return investment from thelatter.

• Research in inspection is highlyexperimental in nature. Some ofthe questions regarding inspectionmust be answered by collectingand analyzing inspection data.Examples are the following:

– How many defects are still inthe document after it has beeninspected?

– How many participants are nec-essary to detect the optimalnumber of defects?

– What is the return on invest-ment for inspection (cost/bene-fits ratio)?

Practical Use

Inspections are widely used in soft-ware organizations where quality andproductivity are both critical to a com-pany's survival. Inspections are anindustry-proven best practice for soft-ware quality improvement and costreduction. Following an up-frontinvestment, the introduction ofinspections in a project typically paysoff in an increase in efficiency. Thiscan be translated into schedule reduc-tion. Considering the positive impactinspections have on a project, it is notsurprising that the interest in inspec-tions and reports of successful resultshave been strongly increasing since itsdevelopment in the 1970s.

Cooperation

Research Cooperation:– University of Kaiserslautern,

Kaiserslautern (D);

– University of Maryland (USA)

Industrial Cooperation:– AEG Atlas GmbH, Frankfurt/Main (D);

– Allianz Lebensversicherungs-AG,

Stuttgart (D);

– Daimler-Benz Aerospace DASA, Bremen (D);

– Daimler-Benz AG, Forschung und Technik,

Ulm (D);

– Ericsson Eurolab Deutschland GmbH,

Herzogenrath (D);

– Robert Bosch GmbH, Frankfurt/Main,

Stuttgart (D);

– Siemens AG, ZFE, München (D);

Christian Bunse

Oliver Laitenberger


Requirements Engineering Group

Developing systems that fulfill theneeds of the customer to the maxi-mum possible extent is at the core ofany software engineering project.Hence these needs first have to beclarified and well-documented, andthis is the role of Requirements Engi-neering (RE). Otherwise, systems donot meet customer requirements, aredifficult to maintain, and/or cost andschedule overruns are a likely result.

Since Requirements Engineering is theinterface between customer anddeveloper, it plays a key role in theoverall success of the softwaredevelopment project. It has threemajor phases: elicitation, modelingand validation/verification.

Requirements elicitation addressesgathering requirements from stake-holders and is a multi-disciplinaryprocess involving managers, end-users, software developers, and main-tenance stake-holders. As a socialprocess it is burdened with all thedelicacies of human interaction.

Requirements modeling deals with theproduction of the requirements docu-ments. As these documents form thebasis for all further software develop-ment phases, any errors introduced atthis stage have a critical impact onsoftware development and will becostly to repair. They also influenceproject management, since therequirements form the basis for costand schedule estimates.

Validation ensures that the variousstakeholders reach a consensus aboutthe elicited set of requirements. Verifi-cation deals with the proof of essentialproperties like consistency, complete-ness, and safety-relevant invariants.

Goals

The goal of this group is to definerequirements engineering processesand product models which

• support communication betweenend-users and software developers

• define precisely the requiredsemantics and properties of thesystem that is to be developed

• lead to early detection of errors inthe requirements, while trying toprevent them in the first place

• give a basis for future maintenanceand evolution of the resultingsystem.

Processes and products will usuallydepend on the characteristics of thedevelopment organization and thetype of application to be constructed.

Group Focus

The RE group concentrates on the fol-lowing issues:

• In the case of real-time, embeddedsystems, how can one constructrequirements documents that satis-fy the desired qualities? Especially,how can one formalize require-ments to circumvent ambiguitiesand how can these formalizedrequirements be communicated tostakeholders?

• Evaluating a number of formaldescription techniques, inparticular the SCR (Software CostReduction) requirementstechnique.

• Due to the large number of per-sons involved in requirements engi-neering and the diversity of theirgoals, the negotiation of require-ments is very important in order toachieve general acceptance of the


final system. How can this processbe adequately structured andenacted in order to achieve thisaim?

• Requirements engineering for afamily of systems, that is of sys-tems that deal with the sameapplication domain, is usually stud-ied independently of the analysisof single application systems. Howare these activities different andwhat can both activities learn fromeach other. How does domainanalysis impact the elicitation andmodeling processes?

• Requirements engineering is influ-enced by the software engineeringprocess, customer relations, typeand size of the application. Conse-quently, the characteristics requiredof the requirements engineeringprocess and products will vary. Canthis dependency be adequatelydescribed and if so, can it be usedto derive prescriptive rules for tai-loring process and products?

Scientific Issues

• The various stakeholders will usual-ly have different views on the char-acteristics required from a systemthat will adequately address theirneeds. These views need to beelicited and reconciled into a com-mon view. This process needs to besupported by effective means, suchas tools or adequately-structuredsocial processes.

• The requirements documents formthe basis for product developmentand maintenance. Thus their quali-ty has a major impact on theseactivities. Consequently, maintain-ing the quality of these documentshas to be an ongoing concern dur-ing their development and needs

to be finally ascertained by meanssuch as inspection or static analy-sis.

• The reuse of artifacts during soft-ware development is a key in pro-ducing high quality products withlittle costs. The higher the abstrac-tion level of the artifacts, the largerthe potential gains. Thus it is animportant issue to find ways forsupporting the systematic reuse ofrequirements during the applica-tion development process. This isespecially true when developing afamily of systems.

Practical Use

Requirements engineering is a criticalstep that must precede any softwaredevelopment effort. It is key to com-mercial success of a project and tocustomer satisfaction as it is necessaryto ascertain that the system to bebuilt will meet customer needs andthat the customer understands theimplications of fielding the system inits overall business environment.

To illustrate the importance of havinga good requirements engineeringprocess, it has been demonstratedthat it costs 5 to 20 times more onaverage to remove a defect duringimplementation than during therequirements engineering phase.

Cooperation

Research Cooperation: – University of Kaiserslautern,

Kaiserslautern (D);

– McMaster University, Hamilton,

Ontario (CAN);

– Naval Research Lab,

Washington, D.C. (USA)

Industrial Cooperation: – Bosch Telecom GmbH, Frankfurt/Main (D)

Erik Kamsties

Klaus Schmid

Industrially-funded Projects

Industrially-funded projects are thecore business of the IESE: Projects aredesigned to take care of the specialneeds of the customers. They dependupon the size of the customer and thetype of department - r&d, softwaredevelopment, quality assurance - withwhich we collaborate. Industrial pro-jects thus vary along different dimen-sions:

– They vary between puretechnology transfer and pure r&d.

– They can be short-term or long-term.

– They can focus on directly increas-ing developers’ know-how or oncreating leveraging competencethat enables the customer to self-improve.

Especially when canvassing long-termcollaborations, we design a series ofprojects rather than one monolithicproject. We start with an expert-study,a workshop and customer-specifictrainings and then move on to morelong-term improvement programs.


Transfer Projects

Partner

Allianz Lebensversicherungs-AG,Reinsburgstraße 19,70178 Stuttgart

Bosch Telecom GmbH,Kleyerstraße 94,60326 Frankfurt

Daimler Benz Aerospace,Produktbereich Raumfahrt-Infrastruktur,Postfach 105909,28059 Bremen

Daimler-Benz AG,Forschung und Technik,Wilhelm-Runge-Straße 11,89081 Ulm

Ericsson Eurolab Deutschland GmbH,Ericsson Allee 1,52134 Herzogenrath

Kommunikations- und Datentechnik GmbH,Rottendorfer Straße 7a97072 Würzburg

Markant Südwest GmbH,Winzler Straße 152-160,66955 Pirmasens

Q-Labs Software Engineering GmbH,Sauerwiesen 267661 Kaiserslautern

Robert Bosch GmbH,Kleyerstraße 94,60326 Frankfurt

Societa Interbancaria per lÁutomazione,Viale Certosa, 218

Cooperation Style

Technology Transfer

Technology Transfer

Technology Transfer

Research and Development


Technology Transfer

Technology Transfer

Technology Transfer

Technology Transfer


Collaborations within industrially-funded projects

Dr. Frank Bomarius, Department Head


In addition, the developer effort distri-bution found in this project willenable identification of areas wherenot enough effort has been spent onthe development life-cycle whichcould have influenced the resultingsoftware architecture, e.g., too mucheffort spent proportionately on imple-mentation and testing as compared todesign and inspections.

Partner:Daimler-Benz AG,Forschung und TechnikPO-Box 2360D-89013 Ulm

ContactDr. Lionel Briandemail: [email protected]: +49 631 707 251Fax: +49 631 707 202

Objective

The objective of this project is to workout a model for the assessment of thequality (reliability) of the object-orient-ed software architecture developedwithin a pilot project.

Approach

In the project, a measurement pro-gram is set up to collect data whichhelps to build the intended models.

First, change report data about everychange that is made to the system,whether it be as a result of changingrequirements or as a result of an error,is recorded.

Second, the software architecture isassessed by means of the most appro-priate object-oriented coupling, cohe-sion and inheritance measures avail-able in the literature.

Each measure is empirically validated -that is, the relationship between eachmeasure and the quality (i.e., reliabilityas measured by the change reportdata) of the software classes in thearchitecture is evaluated. Measureswhich are found to be good indicatorsof software quality are then used tobuild a predictive model of softwarequality for this architecture.

Results

A quality model is built from thosemeasures found to be the most signif-icant predictors of the reliability of thesoftware classes with respect to defectdistribution. This model can then beused by developers to plan futureresource allocation for inspections andtesting predicted defect types.

AMOS - Assessment Model forObject-Oriented SoftwareArchitectures


The model was validated and adjustedusing data from ten past sd&m pro-jects. This data provided the bench-mark for cost estimation in future pro-jects.

From the point of view of the user,i.e., the project manager, the modelitself and the benchmark can be con-sidered a black box. To use the model,the user deals with input data to themodel, that is, a set of project data(estimates) collected by means of aproject data questionnaire, and theoutput of the model, which is the costestimate.

Each of the cost-driving factors con-sidered by the model contributes tothis estimate. Depending on the pro-ject under consideration, i.e., depend-ing on the actual input from the pro-ject data questionnaire, some factorscontribute more than others to theestimate. In other words, for the givenproject some factors have a higherassociation with cost than others.

To assess the level of risk and conse-quently reduce the risk of cost, thosefactors that contribute most to the

estimate must be identified. There-fore, besides the cost estimate itself,the model also provides a ranking ofthe factors with respect to their rela-tive association with cost.

Results

The study produced a validated costestimation model. The output of themodel can be used to determine therisk level of the project and, depend-ing on the risk level and the highestranked cost-driving factors, the projectmanager can now select a set of riskreduction procedures that are suitableto lower the risks.

Partner:sd&m software design & managementGmbH und Co. KGThomas-Dehler-Straße 27D-81737 München

ContactDr. Frank Bomariusemail: [email protected]: +49 631 707 121Fax: +49 631 707 203

...predictandcontrolcost ofprojects...

This study was performed by theFraunhofer IESE between September1996 and March 1997 for softwaredesign & management GmbH und Co.KG (sd&m), a software developmentcompany in Munich.

Objective

The objective was to analyze the costestimation procedures in effect atsd&m and to build an explicit sd&m-specific model for reliably estimatingthe cost of future projects. This modelenables less experienced project man-agers to make reliable, repeatable,and justifiable estimations and relieveexperienced managers from the bur-den of being involved too frequentlyin cost estimations. It also allows man-agers to perform a cost-related riskassessment at the start of a projectand plan for appropriate steps toreduce risk.

Approach

All analysis performed during thestudy was based on information gath-ered in a series of interviews fromsome of the most experienced sd&mproject managers. Each step of analy-sis as well as synthesis of the modelwas reviewed and verified by sd&mmanagers. The cost estimation modelproper was validated using projectdata from successful sd&m projects.

The cost estimation model developedduring the study is particularly tailoredto the type of projects and the style ofproject management at sd&m. Strictlyspeaking, the model is applicable onlyin this particular context. The core ofthe model is based on a specific sub-set of the most important cost factorsidentified for sd&m during the study.

Cost estimation model for sd&m


The continuously growing softwareportion in products and services in theaeronautics and space industry is ofparamount importance for the systemsbuilt. Demands for this type of soft-ware, such as mission criticality, com-plexity, or sheer size, are increasing.

At the same time, Daimler-Benz Aero-space (DASA) is exposed to substantialbudget cuts in European space pro-grams. Consequently, only fixed-pricecontracts are concluded by the Euro-pean Space Agency (ESA) and compe-tition among providers increases. Toremain competitive and satisfy cus-tomers, DASA launched improvementprograms that are targeted at keepingtight schedules and at improving pro-ductivity and quality.

At the Department Informatics andOperations of the Space InfrastructureDivision at DASA, improvement goalshave been identified in the course ofan analysis performed in early 1996 bythe Fraunhofer IESE and other externalconsultants. The analysis aimed atrestructuring the internal businessprocesses.

Objective

The cooperation with Fraunhofer IESEhas been launched to tackle theimprovement goals related to softwaredevelopment, namely to:

(1) Improve the transparency of thesoftware development process.

(2) Detect defects earlier in the soft-ware development process, reducecost, increase reliability and pre-dictability.

(3) Capture and prepare experiencefrom software projects for reuse infuture projects and across applica-tion domains.

Approach

The general approach pursued in thiscooperation is to improve the softwareprocess by means of measurement-controlled process improvements. Themeasurement program was set up andperformed according to the Goal/Question/Metric-Approach (GQM).

During an initial training phase, thedevelopment process of the softwarecomponent CSS (Core Simulator Soft-ware) was selected as pilot project.The CSS simulator supports the soft-ware development for Columbus, theEuropean contribution to the spacestation Alpha. Within this project aGQM measurement program was setup to analyze the project in retrospect.

Pertaining to goal (1), the measurement program has beenexpanded to new projects in order togain experience in setting up measure-ment programs and to increase trans-parency.

Driven by goal (2), new software techniques, namelyinspection techniques, have beenselected, customized to the particularneeds of DASA, and introduced to thesoftware development process. Inspec-tions are applied to software develop-ment artifacts of early developmentstages in order to decrease defectrate, increase reliability and pre-dictability, and cut costs for rework.Their performance is monitored bymeans of a tailored measurement pro-gram.

Results

A support team has been establishedat DASA that is now taking on thetask of defining, setting up, and per-forming controlled improvement steps.In particular, this team is now ready toset up and perform measurement pro-grams and to perform inspections.

The measurement results captured sofar are viewed as a first step in thelong-term goal of establishing anExperience Factory at DASA. An Expe-rience Factory tool is currently being setup to capture experience gained so far.

PartnerDaimler-Benz Aerospace AGSpace Infrastructure DivisionPO-Box 105909D-28059 Bremen

ContactDr. Frank Bomariusemail: [email protected]: +49 631/707-121Fax: +49 631/707-203

Efficiency Improvement of Soft-ware Development at Space Infra-structure Division of Daimler-BenzAerospace AG


MS WWS 2000 - Markant SüdwestMerchandising System

Project MS WWS 2000 is a softwaredevelopment effort of Markant Süd-west AG, a trading company. Markantused a commercial merchandising sys-tem in the past and has decided in1995 to implement a new system onits own which fits its needs betterthan currently available commercialproducts and does so at a lower cost.

Objective

The short-term goal is to deliver themerchandising system needed byMarkant without compromising itsscalability and variability. On a longer-term basis, a generic, domain-specificarchitecture and its associated reusablecomponent will be developed so as toenable this merchandising system toadapt to different lines of merchandis-ing activities.

The principal role of the IESE withinthis project is the establishment of anefficient and highly-productive soft-ware development team at Markant.This means providing software engi-neering techniques and methods thatmeet the particular needs of Markant.Furthermore, the IESE supportsMarkant in domain analysis, require-ments engineering, the selection oftechniques, methods and tools, overallsystem design, and in the manage-ment and optimization of the softwaredevelopment process by means ofcoaching and training.This year, Markant Südwest Software-und Dienstleistungs GmbH decided tolocate its office within walking dis-tance of the IESE to benefit from astrong, daily interaction with us.

Approach

The project started with a domainanalysis and initial optimizations oforganizational structures. Require-ments analysis and specification wereconducted using an adaptation ofBooch's methodology using RationalRose (TM).

For the system modeling phase theBooch method was also employed. Asthe implementation phase proceeds adescription of current practices of soft-ware development is produced. Thisdescription is the prerequisite for goal-oriented measurement programs andimprovements which are in theprocess of being introduced.

Continuous process optimizationaccording to the improvement goalsand preparation of ISO 9000 certifica-tion of Markant's matured softwaredevelopment process will be one ofthe IESE’s future roles within this pro-ject.

Results

The software development team hasbeen assembled and trained in therelevant methods and techniques. Thearchitecture of the WWS2000 systemhas been determined and a detaileddesign has been worked out. The newmerchandising system will use client-server technology. The client side isobject-oriented, while the server sideis a conventional high-performancerelational database system.

For the implementation of the client-part which comprises the GUI, theapplication logics, and the object-rela-tional mapping, VisualAge (IBM) isused. The server-part is on an IBMAS/400 accessed through a networkvia SQL.

Work has now started to transition theWWS2000 architecture to the genericmerchandising system architecture. Theresult of this work is expected to beginsystem instances generation in 1998.

The system is to be operational inearly 1998.

PartnersMarkant Südwest Handels AGWinzler Straße 152-160D-66955 Pirmasens

Markant Südwest Software- undDienstleistungs GmbHSauerwiesen 6D-67661 Kaiserslautern

ContactDr. Jean-Marc DeBaudemail: [email protected]: +49 631 707 251Fax: +49 631 707 202


PartnerEricsson Eurolab Deutschland GmbHResearch DepartmentEricsson Allee 1D-52134 Herzogenrath

ContactDr. Frank Bomariusemail: [email protected]: +49 631 707 121Fax: +49 631 707 203

Then the description of the inspectionprocess was used to develop capture-recapture models. Such models allowthe prediction of the number ofdefects remaining in a document afterit has been inspected.

Both the model of the inspectionprocess and the prediction model arethen validated with historical datafrom Ericsson's projects. Based on theresults, formal inspection methods areevaluated and introduced experimen-tally in a project. This helps improvethe effectiveness and efficiency of theinspection process and assess the pre-diction model in practice.

Results

There are three major results of thisproject:

• A description of a well-definedinspection process as it is used inreality within Ericsson.

• A well-defined procedure forcollecting inspection data. Thisincludes a procedure for inspectiondata analysis.

• A prediction model to assess thequality of the inspected document.

Proper application of the inspectionprocess together with a validatedmodel for inspection data analysis andprediction of inspection effectivenessprovide Ericsson with a powerful toolto control the quality of the softwareproduct and to lower costs.

PRIME - Predicting Inspection Metrics

Today, the market for telecommunica-tions products is rapidly growing whileat the same time, competition isincreasing. For Ericsson, as a majorglobal player in this market, it isimportant to reduce time-to-market,to lower development costs andimprove quality aspects such as relia-bility.

Since the proportion of software tothe value of telecommunication prod-ucts is up to 80%, the software devel-opment process and the techniquesand methods employed are crucial forEricsson's success.

Project PRIME focuses on softwareinspections at Ericsson. Inspections arean important means of reducing costsand increasing reliability of softwareproducts, if they are used in earlyphases of the software developmentprocess.

Objective

The goal of project PRIME is to showthat the use of quantitatively-con-trolled inspection methods helps tomake significant improvements withinthe software development process atEricsson. It is expected that this willenable Ericsson to improve controlover the inspection process and toassess the quality of the inspecteddocuments.

Approach

During a pre-study, the existinginspection process at Ericsson wasanalyzed, inspections were attended,and inspectors were interviewed inorder to describe the current inspec-tion process.


PROMO - Practical Guidelines forProcess Modeling

The purpose of the PROMO project isto refine applicable guidelines forprocess modeling in the context ofsystematic and continuous processimprovement at Daimler-Benz AG.

The first version of the process model-ing guidelines has been piloted in twoprojects at Daimler-Benz AG, the oneat AEG Atlas GmbH (software systemsfor energy distribution) and the otherat Mercedes-Benz AG (software sys-tems for automotive electronics).

Objective

The goal of the PROMO project is tocollect the experiences the pilot pro-jects had in using the process model-ing guidelines, and to revise theguidelines accordingly. The revisedprocess modeling guidelines will beemployed in projects at Daimler-BenzAG.

Approach

The project starts by collecting theexperiences of the pilot projects inusing the process modeling guidelines.Two methods are used:

First the persons involved in the pilotprojects write down their experiencesabout using the guidelines, and thenthe experiences are discussed in ameeting with the persons involved inpilot projects and the PROMO person-nel. From the experiences, practicalproposals for improving the processmodeling guidelines are derived, andthe guidelines are revised accordingly.

The process modeling guideline fol-lows the NASA/SEL Quality Improve-ment Paradigm (QIP). The process

modeling formalism used in the pilotprojects was slightly adapted fromIDEF0 formalism.

Results

As a result of the project, practicalexperience on the requirements forprocess modeling guidelines is gained,in particular, applying process model-ing methods in real-life projects, andthe kinds of benefits that can beachieved when applying process mod-eling.

As an intermediate result of the pro-ject, a summary of the experiences ofthe pilot projects and improvementproposals was derived from the expe-riences. The final result of the projectis the revised version of the processmodeling guidelines, which can beused in future projects at Daimler-Benz AG.

PartnerDaimler-Benz AG, Forschung undTechnikPO-Box 2360D-89013 Ulm

ContactDr. Lionel Briandemail: [email protected]: +49 631 707 251Fax: +49 631 707 202


talize and reuse life-cycle experienceand products.

The first step in this project was thedefinition and implementation of agoal-oriented measurement programfor a set of pilot projects. This stepprovided a baseline of measured datareflecting the state of the softwaredevelopment processes and productsat the time the project was started.

Improvement from subsequent stepscan be measured quantitatively refer-ring to these baseline figures.

Software quality is continuouslyimproved by systematic use of effi-cient review and inspection tech-niques. Ongoing measurement is usedto monitor the achievements.

The development of a prototype expe-rience base allows the reuse of soft-ware measurement plans. Furthermoreit enables corporate learning in thelong run. It makes experiences explicitand turns them into corporate legacy.

Results

The level of understanding regardingthe software development process hasincreased in many respects, such aseffort distribution, amount of rework,reasons for rework, relevant influencefactors on the stability of require-ments, amount and scope of changes.

Hypotheses that existed or had beenstated at the beginning of the pro-gram have been confirmed or havebeen refuted by means of quantitativemethods.

The project has clearly identified prob-lem areas, such as overvaluing testingas a means of creating quality.

Areas of potential improvement havebeen discovered. For instance, it waslearned that the level of experiencehas much more influence on theeffort spent than the use of CASEtools.

Software engineering know-how hasbeen improved in many ways. Mostimportantly, goal-oriented measure-ment applied to software processesand products has enabled the soft-ware developers to continuously self-improve in a well-controlled way.

PartnerAllianz Lebensversicherungs-AGIS/VerfahrenstechnikReinsburgstraße 19D-70178 Stuttgart

ContactDr. Günther Ruheemail: [email protected] Tel: +49 6301 707 121 Fax: +49 6301 707 203

Systematic Improvement ofSoftware Quality by Goal-OrientedMeasurement at AllianzLebensversicherungs-AG

With the advent of an open market inthe European Community the qualityof software development processesand their resulting products hasgained high impact on the competi-tiveness of insurance companies allover Europe. This development hasbeen recognized early by Allianz. As apreventive action a program for thesystematic improvement of softwarequality was established at the AllianzLebensversicherungs-AG Stuttgart.The program was started in 1993 andwas supported by STTI-KL until theend of 1995. Since 1996 the Fraun-hofer IESE continues to conduct theprogram.

Objective

The objective of the program is toincrease the competitiveness of Allianzin the European insurance market bymeans of improving quality and pro-ductivity and time-to-market of soft-ware development, thus, allowingtimely reactions as new marketingopportunities arise.

Approach

The cornerstone of this project is theQuality Improvement Paradigm (QIP),a modification of Total Quality Man-agement (TQM) with special emphasison software development.

The QIP as conducted by the Fraun-hofer IESE is closely related to goal-oriented software measurement. Theimplementation of this paradigm pro-vides an organizational infrastructurecalled Experience Factory (EF) to capi-


Publicly-funded Projects

Collaborations exist with many pub-licly-funded consortia aimed at eithersoftware engineering technologyadvancement or dissemination of bestpractices. Publicly-funded projects canbe devoted to both research anddevelopment and technology transfer.Additional bilateral industrial collab-orations often result from performingthese projects. In 1996, the projectsshown in the list below were per-formed:

Project

Softquali

Muvie

Midas

CEMP

PERFECT

PROFES

STTIKaiserslautern

Partner

Daimler-Benz (F&T) (D)AEG Atlas GmbH (D)Allianz Lebensversicherungs-AG (D)Simens AG (D)

GfAI (Gesellschaft zur Förderung angewandter Informatik e.V.), (D)AIF (Arbeitsgemeinschaft industriellerForschungsvereinigungen „Otto von Guericke“ e.V.) (D)

Societa Interbancaria per lÁutomatione (I)CEFRIEL (I)

Robert Bosch GmbH (D)Schlumberger RPS (NL)Digital Equipment SPA (I)CEFRIEL (I)

Daimler Benz AG (D)Robert Bosch GmbH (D)Siemens AG (D)Q-Labs Software Engineering GmbH (S)Cap Gemini Innovation (I)Laboratoire LSR (F)

Dräger Medical Electronics (NL)Ericsson (Fi)Etnoteam (I)Schlumberger (F)University of Oulu (Fi)VTT Electronics (FI)

Q-Labs Software Engineering GmbH (D)Markant Software- und Dienstleistungs GmbH (D)Tecmath GmbH (D)ICON Intelligent Control Gebäudetechnik GmbH (D)Schönfisch & Faust Computer Integration (D)

Funded by

German Ministry forEducation andResearch (BMBF)

German Ministry ofScience (BMWi)

CEC ESPRIT/ESSIProject No. 21244



CEC ESPRIT/ESSIProposal No. 23239

Ministry of EconomicAffairs,Transportation,Agriculture andViniculture of theState of Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany

Title

Systematic Improvement of SoftwareQuality by Goal-Oriented Measurementand Explicit Reuse of Software Know-How

Graphic Support of Complex BusinessProcesses Using Multiview Editors forWorkflows

Measurable Improvement ofDevelopment, Deployment andOperation of Interbank AutomationSoftware

Customized Establishment ofMeasurement Programms

Process Enhancement for Reduction ofSoftware Defects

Product-Focused Improvement ofEmbedded Software Processes

Support of Small and MediumsizeEnterprises

Start

5/1/1995

1/10/1995

1/1/1996

1/1/1994

1/10/1993

1/1/1997

1/1/1996

Publicly-funded Projects


Publicly-funded projects play an essen-tial role in the research and technolo-gy transfer strategy of the FraunhoferIESE. They are used to

• collaborate with leading researchinstitutes in projects of strategicrelevance,

• cooperate with industrial partnersto develop innovative solutions fortheir problems,

• transfer technologies into industryand establish related know-how.

There are different forms of publicly-funded projects corresponding to thefunding organization and the scope ofthe funding program. Currently, fiveavenues of public research projects aremaintained at the Institute:

• European ESPRIT projects• European ESSI projects• German BMBF projects• German AiF projects• Projects funded by the State of

Rhineland-Palatinate

ESPRIT (European Strategic Program-me for Research and Development inInformation Technologies) is a Euro-pean program designed to ensure thatEurope’s industries gain competitiveadvantage from efficient use of com-munication and information systems.Within the fourth framework of theESPRIT program the Fraunhofer IESEwas involved in two international R&Dprojects in the area of ‘SoftwareIntensive Systems Engineering’:PERFECT and PROFES. Both projectswere used to collaborate with leadingresearch and industrial organizations.The general objective was to developcompetitive know-how for processand product improvement which canbe used in subsequent industrialimprovement programs.

The goal of the European Systems andSoftware Initiative (ESSI) is to promoteimprovements in the software devel-opment process in industry, by takingup well-founded and established - butinsufficiently developed - methods andtechnologies, so as to achieve greaterefficiency, higher quality, and greatereconomy. Fraunhofer IESE wasinvolved in a Process ImprovementExperiment aimed at demonstratingsoftware process improvement in theconfiguration management domain.The MIDAS project will be describedsubsequently.

In 1994, the German Federal Ministryfor Research and Technology (BMBF)initiated a special program to supportsoftware technology. The objective ofthe program was to increase the com-petence of German industry in soft-ware development. Among the fewprojects that were selected for fund-ing was the SoftQuali project which isdescribed in more detail in this chap-ter.

The Ministry of Economic Affairs,Transportation, Agriculture and Vini-culture of the State of Rhineland-Palatinate supported the dissemina-tion of process and softwareengineering technologies to small andmedium size companies in Rhineland-Palatinate.

The ‘Arbeitsgemeinschaft industriellerForschungseinrichtungen e.V.’ (AiF) isa German organization for industrialcollaboration. Special emphasis of thisprogram is in small and medium-sizeenterprises. Together with the‘Gesellschaft zur Förderung ange-wandter Informatik’ (GFaI), FraunhoferIESE participated in a project calledMUVIE.

Dr. Günther Ruhe, Deputy Director, Department Head


The effectiveness of the configurationmanagement policies and tools wasassessed by means of a measurementprogram which is based on theGoal/Questions/Metrics (GQM) para-digm. It contains the definition ofGQM and measurement plans. Thesubsequent comparative analysis ofmeasurement data reflected the situa-tion before and after the introductionof configuration management interms of cost and benefit.

Results

• Definition of the configurationmanagement process covering thedescription of included policies,roles, and tools. The process mod-eling activity started from theproblem reporting, tracking, andsolving activities, and was extend-ed to the whole software life-cycle.

• Introduction of goal-oriented mea-surement within SIA.

• Stepwise definition of measure-ment goals by preference model-ing.

• Definition of the GQM plans toevaluate benefits of configurationmanagement.

• Modeling of configuration man-agement processes.

• Execution of the measurementplan to assess the original situation(with respect to the baseline pro-ject). This involves the collectionand analysis of data like the num-ber of detected problems, the ser-vice availability time, the effortemployed to correct errors, etc.

• Performance of common feedbacksessions for analysis and interpreta-tion of results.

• Experience packages on the abovetopics.

PartnerSIA - Societa Interbancaria perlÁutomazioneViale Certosa, 21820156 Milano, Italy

ContactDr. Günther Ruheemail: [email protected]: +49 6301 707 121Fax: +49 6301 707 203

Measurable Improvement ofDevelopment, Deployment andOperation of InterbankAutomation Software (MIDAS)

The Societa Interbancaria perlÁutomazione (SIA) is in charge ofrunning, developing, and maintainingthe national interbank network ofItaly. Reliability and availability ofinterbank services offered by SIA is ofessential importance to all the finan-cial transactions performed within thisnetwork. Effectiveness of configura-tion management is, in general,expected to be of essential impor-tance to the quality of the corre-sponding software development.However, no detailed qualitative andquantitative information was availableabout the main factors that influencesuccessful performance of configura-tion management, and about ways toexploit this information for optimalproject performance.

Approach

Improvement was achieved by baselin-ing the SIA software process andestablishing an effective configurationmanagement process. A suitable mea-surement program was defined andconducted in order to objectivelyassess the effectiveness of the newconfiguration management practice.Configuration Management Definitionof the configuration managementprocess covers description of includedpolicies, roles, and tools. The processmodeling activity started from theproblem reporting, tracking, and solv-ing activities, and then was extendedto the whole software life-cycle.Implementation of the processinvolved modification and optimiza-tion of the initial model and determi-nation of critical success factors.


Architecture

The MUVIE architecture implies anindependent module for managementof all interrelationships among viewsand artifacts which is called Multi-View-Engine. The Multi-View-Engine isrealized as a separate process andworks completely independent of thevisual representation of all artifacts.

Changes are processed incrementallybased on a formal Graph Model,which ensures scalability and open-ness.

Results

The major results of the MUVIE-Projectare:

• A set of documented techniquesfor building integrated multi-viewenvironments based on graphstructures. The techniques includeinteractive direct-manipulationtechniques which help the user todeal with multiple views and aconceptual framework for incre-mental change and update han-dling at the technical layer. Thedocuments are collected in a finalreport and will be released as aninternal IESE report.

• A prototypic implementation of aframework. The prototypic imple-mentation encompasses aclient/server approach which canbe reused for building visual lan-guage environments, such as forexample CASE- and hypertexttools. Components of the frame-work encompass support for inter-action, visualization, automatic lay-out and management of views.The framework has been imple-mented in C++ both on Sun/Solarisand PV/WinNT platforms.

MUVIE Graphical Modeling of BusinessWorkflows with Multi-View Editors

Graphical modeling of flows andstructures helps managers and engi-neers to understand and communicatesystems in many disciplines. In prac-tice, the applicability of visual repre-sentations is limited because thedesign of large systems results in hugeand complicated graphics.

Approach

The objective of the MUVIE project isto research on Multi-View DesignEnvironments, dealing with the com-plexity of graphical representationsmaintaining user defined views on thegraphics.

Previous projects have shown, thatsimple approaches like the Multi-View-Controller approach are notsufficient in this case.

In MUVIE, each view defines a focuson the underlying graph structure,visualizing only those parts of the sys-tem that pertain to the view. Incre-mental changes are managed by aformal approach called Graph Model.In this approach, all changes to thecentral graph structure (CentralAbstract Graph) are mapped to graphreplacements.

Because all views are mapped to sub-graphs of the central graph structure,graph replacements can be used toupdate the views. Sophisticated userinteraction techniques, includingdirect manipulation and hypertextnavigation support helps to managerelations among different views.Adaptable layout algorithms are inte-grated and relieve the user from com-plex manual placement tasks.

• A sample visual editor for FunSoft-Nets. As an evaluation of theprototypic framework, a concretegraphic editor for FunSoft-Nets hasbeen implemented. This editorallows to define FunSoft-Nets frommany different perspectives, tonavigate between different repre-sentations.

PartnerGFaI – Gesellschaft zur Förderungangewandter Informatik e.V.;IIEF - Institut für Informatik in Entwurfund Fertigung GmbH;Ingenieurbüro Drews, Berlin;Fraunhofer ISST, Berlin/Dortmund;Elpro Leit- und Energietechnik GmbH;REVIG - Rückstands und Emissions-vermeidungs Ingenieur-GesellschaftmbH, Berlin

ContactDr. Peter Rösch email: [email protected] Tel: +49 6301 707 121 Fax: +49 6301 707 203


• The methodological perspectiveaddresses the activities involved insystematic improvement.

• The organizational perspectiveaddresses the roles and organiza-tional entities involved in systemat-ic improvement.

• The functional perspective address-es the organizational and humancapabilities, as well as the tool sup-port required for systematicimprovement.

Results

The major project results are the PER-FECT Improvement Approach, a hand-book and tutorials about it, as well assoftware tools and environments. PER-FECT has been structured into threework packages: methodology, plat-form, and applications.

The methodological result is the PER-FECT Improvement Approach (PIA). Itguides the introduction and operationof company-specific improvement pro-grams based on the Quality Improve-ment Paradigm (QIP), the Goal/Ques-tion/Metric approach (GQM), theExperience Factory concept (EF), and

process modeling. PERFECT has madecontributions and provided supporttools for each of these areas.

The platform tasks have developedtools and environments for supportingimprovement programs, such as APELand GQMaspect. APEL is a softwareengineering environment, integratingproduct management, process model-ing and enactment, and measure-ment. GQMaspect is a GQM editorsupporting the planning of measure-ment programs.

The applications have focused on andevaluated the methodology and plat-form developments in projects fromthe embedded systems and telecom-munication domains. They have evalu-ated the PIA as very helpful and arenow disseminating and spreading it toother projects and departments withintheir organizations.

ESPRIT Project No 9090

PartnersThe PERFECT project was carried outby a European consortium within theESPRIT program by:Cap Gemini Innovation (F);Daimler-Benz AG (D);LSR: Logiciels, Systèmes, RéseauxGrenoble (F);Q-Labs (S);Robert Bosch GmbH (D);Siemens AG (N);Sintef (N);University of Kaiserslautern/FraunhoferIESE (D)

ContactDr. Günther Ruheemail: [email protected]: +49 6301 707 121Fax: +49 6301 707 203

Systematic improvement in the soft-ware domain is based on basic con-cepts such as QIP (fundamentalimprovement paradigm for softwaredevelopment), experience factory (fororganizational learning and reuse),and the GQM paradigm (for goal-ori-ented measurement). While these fun-damental concepts are very convinc-ing, their industrial application needsa more precise description that is sup-ported by appropriate tools and aug-mented with industry-style introduc-tion material.

Objective

The overall objective of PERFECT hasbeen to assist European industry inthe measurement-based improvementof software processes. A set of tech-niques, methods, and tools supportingthe improvement activities has beendeveloped.

Approach

The PERFECT Improvement Approach(PIA) guides the introduction andoperation of company-specific processimprovement programs. The PIA isdefined through the following parts:

• Principles of systematic improve-ment.

• Generic models that make theimprovement principles operational.

• A collection of refinements andinstantiations of the generic mod-els that provide operational sup-port for systematic improvement.

The generic models are structured intothree perspectives: a methodologicalperspective, an organizational per-spective, and a functional perspective:

PERFECT – Process Enhancement forReduction of Software Defects


• combines and enhances thestrengths of goal-oriented mea-surement, process assessment,product/process modeling andexperience factory;

• is validated through case studies inthree industrial organizations.

Approach

The PROFES product quality improve-ment methodology will be developed,validated and exploited in three paral-lel industrial case studies representingthree different application domains forembedded systems. The industrialapplication partners Dräger, Ericsson,and Schlumberger have been selectedbased on a shared set of customer-dri-ven product improvement goals. Byintegrating goal-oriented measure-ment, product/process modeling,reuse of experience, and an enhancedembedded systems process assess-ment approach, the PROFES method-ology will link software-related prod-uct quality factors directly to softwaredevelopment process characteristicsand enable continuous product-drivenimprovement.

Results

• PROFES methodology handbook,containing:– guidelines to the identification

and usage of product/processrelationships,

– support of an integrated use ofgoal-oriented measurement,software process assessment(enhanced for embedded sys-tems), and reuse of experience,

– guidelines to business impactmodeling;

• Tools to support the PROFESmethodology;

• Presentation and training material;• Packaged experience from the case

studies, namely:– lessons learned from the appli-

cation of the PROFES methodol-ogy,

– cost/benefit models,– models describing specific rela-

tionships between softwareproduct quality factors andsoftware development processcharacteristics.

ESPRIT Project No 23239

PartnersDräger Medical Electronics (NL);Ericsson Eurolab Deutschland GmbH(SF);Etnoteam S.p.A. (I);Fraunhofer IESE (D);Schlumberger Retail PetroleumSystems (F);University of Oulu (SF);VTT Electronics (SF)

ContactDr. Günther Ruheemail: [email protected] Tel: +49 6301 707 121 Fax: +49 6301 707 203

The increasing amount and complexityof software in embedded systems(like, e.g., telecommunications sys-tems, medical instruments, retailingsystems, or avionics) sets new require-ments for the quality of the productsas well as for the management of thedevelopment process. The amount ofsoftware-related work is often morethan 70% of the development effortfor the whole system, and the soft-ware has to be developed in veryshort cycles, taking into account itsclose relationship with hardware andother product technologies.

For competitive companies, the cus-tomer-perceived product quality is adriving force for the improvement ofembedded software development.Existing improvement approaches,however, are neither tailored to thespecific needs of embedded softwaredevelopment nor focused on productquality requirements. Often, improve-ment goals are mainly based on soft-ware development process maturityprofiles resulting from softwareprocess assessments. Software processassessments, however, do not estab-lish detailed links from domain-specificproduct quality characteristics to indi-vidual development process aspects.

Objective

The objective of the PROFES project isto support the embedded systemsindustry with a tailored improvementmethodology that:• focuses improvement actions on

those elements of the softwaredevelopment process that con-tribute most to the critical productquality factors;

PROFES – PROduct Focusedimprovement of Embedded Soft-ware processes


ment is introduced for pilot projects atthree sites (AEG Atlas GmbH, AllianzLebensversicherungs-AG, Siemens AG).

Reviews and inspections belong to themost promising improvement tech-niques that can be applied to softwaredevelopment at all stages of the life-cycle for different artifacts such asrequirements, design, or code docu-ments. Applied from the very begin-ning, their application supports earlyidentification of faults within the dif-ferent phases of software develop-ment. Reviews and inspections will beintroduced and investigated again inthree parallel case studies.

Reuse of products, processes, andexperience is a promising way of con-tributing to the development of highquality software. The concept of anExperience Factory institutionalizes thereuse of experience and supports:

• characterization and understanding(e.g., number of faults per compo-nent),

• evaluation and assessment (e.g.,effectiveness of tool support),

• prediction and control (e.g., totalproject effort).

The project develops formalisms andmethods to establish such experiencepackages.

Results

Technology transfer of goal-orientedmeasurement into pilot projects at thethree experimental sites.

Performance of the measurement pro-grams with investigation and compar-ative analysis of main factors influenc-ing the quality aspects of reliabilityand flexibility.

Development and introduction of sce-nario-based reading techniques andvalidated results of their effectivenessand efficiency.

Guidelines and heuristics for the appli-cation of reviews and inspections independence of varying environments.

Evaluated prototypes for knowledgepresentation, structuring, and reuse inthe Experience Factory organization.Technology packages on goal-orientedmeasurement, reviews, and inspec-tions, and related experience pack-ages.

PartnersAEG Atlas GmbH;Allianz Lebensversicherung AG;Daimler-Benz AG;Siemens AG;Fraunhofer IESE

ContactDr. Günther Ruhee-mail: [email protected]: +49 6301 707 121Fax: +49 6301 707 203

This project’s main objective is to con-tribute to the theoretical and practicalbasis for systematic quality improve-ment in software industry. Qualityimprovement will be mainly based on

• goal-oriented measurement follow-ing the Goal/Question/Metrics par-adigm,

• systematic review and inspectiontechniques,

• packaging and reuse of softwarebest-practice know-how.

Objective

The focused-quality goals in theselected application domains are flexi-bility of software processes and relia-bility of software products. Besideconcrete results for the involved com-panies, an essential goal is to discovercommonalities and differencesbetween the application domains. Allinvestigations within SoftQuali areaccompanied by cost/benefit analyzes.The whole project uses the experi-mental approach in conjunction withthe Quality Improvement Paradigm asthe underlying paradigm for systemat-ic quality improvement.

Approach

Goal-oriented software measurementhas proven to be as a crucial device indefining the current state and in deriv-ing subsequent improvement actionsin software development. The mea-surement process deals with the defin-ition of goals, the derivation of met-rics, the collection of data, theirvalidation and analysis, and finally theinterpretation of results in the contextof the environment from which themeasures were taken. Within the Soft-Quali project, goal-oriented measure-

SoftQuali


Research Network

International Cooperations

Center for Advanced Empirical Soft-ware Research (CAESAR), University ofNew South Wales, Sydney, Australia

Centre de Recherche Informatique deMontreal (CRIM), Montreal, Canada

European Software Institute (ESI), Bilbao, Spain

Experimental Software EngineeringGroup of the University of Maryland(UMD/ESEG), College Park, USA

Federal University of Santa Catarina,Florianopolis, Brazil

Georgia Tech University, Atlanta,Georgia, USA

GrafP Technologies Inc., Montreal,Quebec, Canada

Instituto per la Ricerca Scientifica eTechnologica (IRST), Trento, Italy;

Semantics Designs, Austin, Texas, USA

Software Engineering Technology Inc.(SET), Knoxville, Tennessee , USA

Software Engineering Institute (SEI),Carnegie Mellon University,Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA

Software Engineering Laboratory(SEL), NASA/Goddard Space FlightCenter, Greenbelt, Maryland, USA

Software Technology Transfer Finland,Espoo, Finland

University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland

University of Tennessee, Knoxville,Tennessee, USA

VTT Electronics, Oulu, Finland

National Cooperations

University of Kaiserslautern,Kaiserslautern, Germany

Center for Learning Systems andApplications (LSA), University ofKaiserslautern, Germany

Institute of Computer Science,University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart,Germany

International Software EngineeringResearch Network (ISERN);Coordinator of ISERN since 1996:Fraunhofer IESE

Members of ISERN:

CSIRO; Australia

Daimler-Benz Research Center; Germany

Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software

Engineering; Germany

Lucent Technologies - Bell Laboratories; USA

Macquarie University; Australia

Nara Institute of Science and Technology; Japan

Norwegian University of Technology & Science;

Norway

NTT Data Corp.; Japan

Quality Laboratories Sweden AB (Q-Labs);

Sweden

University of Bari; Italy

University of Hawaii; USA

University of Kaiserslautern; Germany

University of Maryland at College Park; USA

University of New South Wales; Australia

University of Rome - Tor Vergata; Italy

University of Strathclyde; Scotland; U.K.

VTT Electronics; Finland


Visitors hosted

Prof. Dr. V. R. Basili, University ofMaryland, USA, several visits

David M. Charrett, Macquarie Univer-sity, Sidney, Australia, April 1-4, 1996

Valentina Plekhanova, MacquarieUniversity, Sidney, Australia, April 28-30, 1996

Prof. Tereza G. Kirner, FederalUniversity of Sao Carlos, Brazil, May05 - June 02, 1996

Dr. Marc Kellner, SEI, Pittsburgh, PA,USA, June 13-14, 1996

Frank McGarry, Computer SciencesCorp., Lanham-Seabrook, MD, USA,June 17-28, 1996

Dr. David W. Hislop, Army ResearchOffice, North Carolina, USA, June 21,1996

Prof. Dr. David L. Parnas, McMasterUniversity, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada,September 02, 1996

Prof. Dr. Thomas Seewaldt,Fachhochschule Mannheim,September 19, 1996

Prof. Dr. Jesse Poore, University ofTennessee, Knoxville, TN, USA,September 24, 1996

Robert Susmaga, Poznan University ofTechnology, Poznan, Poland, October14-26, 1996

Prof. Dr. Conradi, University ofTrondheim, Norway, October 15, 1996

Prof. Dr. Ross Jeffery, UNSW, Sydney,Australia, November 23 - December03, 1996


Letters from Guest Scientists

Minna Mäkäräinen, FinlandDr. Richard Webby, AustraliaPierfrancesco Fusaro, Italy

My group leader Markku Oivo at VTTin Finland recommended to me thenewly-established Fraunhofer Institutefor Experimental Software Engineeringin Kaiserslautern, Germany. My year inGermany started in July of 1996 andis half-way over at the time I am writ-ing this. Time surely flies!

Our international work environment isvery inspiring. I have a French projectmanager, an American departmenthead, German room-mate and myclosest colleague is Canadian. So, theofficial language of the institute is,obviously, English.

I worked in the software maintenanceand reengineering group in thedepartment of Innovative SoftwareEngineering. My research tasks includ-ed composing a large tutorial on soft-ware maintenance and building pre-diction models from maintenancedata. I also worked on a customerproject *), which was very interesting.

My time here has given me new, freshviewpoints on my work. I am con-vinced I can use things I have learnedhere to make my research and practi-cal work back in Finland richer andmore versatile.

*) PROMO, see page 48

I was looking for a place to do a post-doctoral year abroad. My colleagueRoss Jeffery, Professor and Head ofthe CAESAR research centre, recom-mended working in Kaiserslautern atProfessor Rombach's new FraunhoferInstitute.

The working environment here atFraunhofer IESE can be characterizedas dynamic, young, and international.My main involvement has been in theSPEARMINT project, which is con-cerned with developing a practicalapproach and better tool support forsoftware process modeling. I think Ihave been able to add my experiencein user interfaces and object-orienteddevelopment to the team, and at thesame time, learn much about the fieldof software process modeling. A spiritof open communication and coopera-tion prevails at IESE, which enablesproductive collaboration both withinand between projects and groups.

CAESAR and IESE have already signeda joint agreement for formal collabo-ration. Upon my return to Australia inJuly 1997, my plan is to continue theSPEARMINT project as a joint initiative.

Prof. Visaggio, head of the SER Lab(Software Engineering Research Labo-ratory), University of Bari, Italy, sug-gested that I should join the researchgroup of Prof. D. Rombach at the Uni-versity of Kaiserslautern. I was lucky.Prof. Rombach gave me the opportu-nity to start working in his newly-established institute in February 1996.I was one of the first foreigners atIESE and I cannot hide that I hadsome troubles adjusting to a com-pletely new working and living envi-ronment. But thanks to the support ofmy colleagues, I was able to overcomethe first difficulties and become accli-matized.

My main involvement has been in theMIDAS *) project. My research activi-ties concern the fields of experimenta-tion and the analysis of validity andreliability of SPICE-based assessments.SPICE is an international project thataims at delivering an ISO standard forsoftware process assessment.

I think that the experience gained dur-ing this year will have a tremendousinfluence on my future career.

*) see page 52


Lecturing Assignments atUniversities

D. RombachLecture: Software Engineering I, Department of Computer Science,University of Kaiserslautern,winter semester 1995/1996 and winter semester 1996/1997

D. RombachProject Course: Software Engineering I, Department of Computer Science,University of Kaiserslautern,summer semester 1996

D. Rombach, Günther RuheLecture: Software Engineering II, University of Kaiserslautern,Department of Computer Science,summer semester 1996

D. RombachProject Course: Software Engineering II, Department of Computer Science,University of Kaiserslautern,winter semester 1995/1996 and winter semester 1996/1997

Günther RuheLecture: Experimental Software Engineering,Friedrich-Schiller-Universität, Jena

Committee Activities

L. Briand:PC Member and publicity chair,ICSM'96, Monterey, CA, USA

L. Briand:PC Member, ICSE'96, Berlin, Germany,March, 1996

L. Briand:General chair, WESS'96 - IEEE Interna-tional Workshop on Empirical Studiesof Software Maintenance, Monterey,CA, USA

D. Rombach:General Chair, ICSE-18, Berlin,Germany, March 25-29, 1996

D. Rombach:Chairman, Steering Committee ICSE(International Conference on SoftwareEngineering), from 1996 to 1998

D. Rombach:Member, Technologiebeirat,Rheinland-Pfalz, since 1994

D. Rombach:Member, Supervisory Board of theGerman National Research Center forInformation Technology (GMD), since1996

D. Rombach:Member, Advisory Board of Q-Labs,since 1996

D. Rombach:Senior Member, Institute of Electricaland Electronics Engineers (IEEE), since1996

C. Tautz:PC member, Technology TransferWorkshop, ICSE 18, Berlin, Germany,March 1996

Professional Contributions

Journal Editorships

L. Briand:Empirical Software Engineering: AnInternational Journal

K. El-Emam:Software Process Newsletter

D. Rombach:IEEE Software Magazine

D. Rombach:The Journal of Systems and Software

D. Rombach:Informatik: Forschung undEntwicklung

D. Rombach:International Journal of SoftwareProcess: Improvement and Practice

D. Rombach:International Journal of EmpiricalSoftware Engineering


Presentations

F. Bomarius:Introduction to Continuous QualityImprovement, Bosch Telecom,Frankfurt/Main, July 30, 1996

C. Bunse, F. Bernauer:Objektorientierte Software-Entwick-lung nach Booch, February 1996 (Thetutorial was conducted for theMarkant Südwest AG, Pirmasens,Germany)

C. Bunse:Systematische Verbesserung von Soft-ware-Entwicklungsprozessen durchzielorientiertes Messen und Bewerten,Innovationsmarkt SteP, HannoverMesse Industrie, April 27, 1996

C. Gresse, I. Wieczorek:Goal Oriented Measurement, held atthe IESE on the occasion of the visit ofKoDa GmbH, Kaiserslautern, Germany,June 24-25, 1996

D. Rombach:Software Experience Factory, EricssonEurolab, Aachen, Germany, March 13,1996

D. RombachSoftware-Entwicklungs-Know-how:Ein entscheidender Faktor für diezukünftige Wettbewerbsfähigkeit,DASA, Bremen, Germany, April 1996

D. Rombach:Software Engineering für sicherheits-kritische Anwendungen, TÜV-Köln,Germany, May 23, 1996

D. Rombach:Software Experience Factory, Ericsson,Kaiserslautern, May 13, 1996

D. Rombach:Kontinuierliche messbasierteVerbesserung von Software-Entwick-lungs-Know-How, Seminar, BoschTelekom, Backnang, Germany,November 26, 1996.

G. Ruhe:Rough Set Based Data Analysis inGoal-Oriented Software Measure-ment, Allianz Lebensversicherungs-AG, Stuttgart, Germany, July 24, 1996

C. Tautz:Introduction to QIP and the Experi-ence Factory, Project meeting withKoDa at Fraunhofer IESE, June 24,1996

C. Tautz:Durchführung eines Messprogramms,DASA-RI, June 26, 1996

C. Tautz:Prozessverbesserungsschritte,Schwerpunkt Inspektionen, DASA-RI,September 18, 1996

I. Wieczorek:Zielorientiertes Messen in Software-Projekten, held at KoDa GmbH,Würzburg, Germany, August 12, 1996

I. Wieczorek:Vorgehensweise bei Planung undDurchführung von GQM-basiertenMessprogrammen, held at RobertBosch GmbH, Stuttgart, Germany,December 17, 1996


Articles in Journals and Books

V. Basili, L. Briand, W. Melo:How Reuse Influences Productivity inOO Systems, Communications of theAssociation of Computing Machinery,October 1996, Vol. 39, No. 10,pp.104-116

V.R. Basili, S. Green, O. Laitenberger,F.Lanubile, F. Shull, S. Sorumgard, M.V.Zelkowitz:The Empirical Investigation of Perspec-tive-Based Reading, Empirical Soft-ware Engineering, vol. 1, No. 2., pp.133-164, 1996.

V. Basili, L. Briand, W. Melo:A Validation of Object-OrientedDesign Metrics as Quality Indicators,IEEE Transactions on Software Engi-neering, October 1996, Vol. 22, No.10, pp. 751-761

L. Briand, K. El Emam, S. Morasca:On the Application of MeasurementTheory in Software, Journal of Empiri-cal Software Engineering,1996, vol. 1,no. 1, pp. 61-88

L. Briand, S. Morasca, V. Basili:Property Based Software EngineeringMeasurement, IEEE Transactions onSoftware Engineering, Vol.22, No. 1,pp. 68-86, January 1996

C. Bunse, P. Giese, M. Verlage:Drei Ansätze zur Formalisierunginformeller Beschreibungen von Soft-ware-Entwicklungsprozessen, GI Soft-waretechnik-Trends, 16/2, ISSN 0720-8928, pp 28-33, May 1996

J. Daly, A. Brooks, J. Miller, M. Roper,M. Wood:Evaluating Inheritance Depth on theMaintainability of Object-OrientedSoftware, Journal of Empirical Soft-

ware Engineering,1996, Vol. 1, No. 2,pp. 109-132

C. Differding, D. Rombach:Kontinuierliche Software-Qualitäts-verbesserung in der industriellen Praxis, Software-Metriken in der Praxis, Christof Ebert, Reiner Dumke(Eds.), 1996

K. El Emam, N. H. Madhavji:An Instrument for Measuring the Suc-cess of the Requirements EngineeringProcess in Information Systems Devel-opment, Journal of Empirical SoftwareEngineering, 1996, Vol. 1, No. 3, pp.201-240

K. El Emam, D. R. Goldenson:An Empirical Evaluation of theProspective International SPICE Stan-dard, Journal of Software ProcessImprovement and Practice, John Wiley,Vol.2, No. 2, 1996, pp. 123-148

H. Günther, D. Rombach, G. Ruhe:Kontinuierliche Qualitätsverbesserungin der Software-Entwicklung,Wirtschaftsinformatik, 38, 1996, 160-171

C. Lott, D. Rombach:Repeatable Software EngineeringExperiments for Comparing Defect-Detection Techniques, InternationalJournal of Empirical Software Engi-neering, Vol. 1, No. 3, pp. 241-277.1996

J. Miller, J. Daly, M. Wood, A. Brooks,M. Roper:Statistical Power and ItsSubcomponents - Missing andMisunderstood Concepts in SoftwareEngineering Empirical Research,Information and Software Technology,vol. 39, No. 4 , pp. 285-295

Scientific Publications

D. Rombach et al.:New Institute for Applied SoftwareEngineering, Software ProcessNewsletter No. 7, Fall 1996, in: Soft-ware Engineering Technical CouncilNewsletter Vol. 14, No. 4, pp.12-14

D. Rombach et al.:New Institute for Applied SoftwareEngineering, Software Process Journal,2:2, 1996


Cleanroom Software Engineering, Pro-ceedings of the First ISEW CleanroomWorkshop, G. Smith, IEEE ComputerSociety Press, pp. 41-52, Berlin, Ger-many, March 1996

C. Bunse, E. Kamsties:Cleanroom Software Engineering: ARequirements Engineer’s View, Pro-ceedings of the Third InternationalConference on Cleanroom SoftwareEngineering Practices, Q-Labs Inc.,College Park Maryland USA, Clean-room, October 1996

J. M. DeBaud:Lessons from a Domain-Based Reengi-neering Effort, Proceedings of theThird Working Conference on ReverseEngineering, pp. 217-226, Monterey,CA, USA, November 1996

J.-M. DeBaud:An Approach to Address the ProblemSpace Question in Domain Modeling’Proceedings of the Workshop onDomain Analysis, Conference onObject-oriented Programming Sys-tems, Languages and Applications‘96, San Jose, CA, USA, October 6,1996

J.-M. DeBaud:Viewing a DSSA in Context: Problemsversus Solutions, Proceedings of the2nd International Software Architec-ture Workshop (ISAW-2), San Fransis-co, CA, USA, October 14-15, 1996

K. El Emam, D. R. Goldenson:Description and evaluation of theSPICE Phase one trials assessments,Proceedings of the International Soft-ware Consulting Network Conference(ISCN’96), Brighton, UK, December1996

J.-F. Girard:Reengineering for Maintenance in theyear 2000, extended abstract for the

Conference Proceedings

M. Baentsch, P. Rösch:Reviewing two Multimedia Presenta-tion (quasi-) Standards, Proceedings ofthe International Workshop onMultimedia Software Development,1996, IEEE Computer Society Press,Berlin Germany, March 1996, pp. 140-149, held together with the 18thInternational Conference on Software

V. Basili, L. Briand, S. Condon, W.Melo, J. Valett:Understanding and Predicting theprocess of software maintenancereleases, International Conference onSoftware Engineering 18, 1996, IEEEComputer Society Press, Berlin, Ger-many, March 1996

Andreas Birk:Factors of systematic technologytransfer, Proceedings of the Workshopon Technology Transfer, 1996, IEEEComputer Society Press, Berlin Ger-many, March 1996, held togetherwith the 18th International Confer-ence on Software Engineering

M. Boldt, B. Götze, A. Keller, M.Plessow, P. Rösch:Werkzeuge zur automatisierten Doku-mentation von hierarchischen netzarti-gen Strukturen, Informatik’96, Soft-waretechnik und Standards,GI-Tagung, Klagenfurt, Austria, Sep-tember 25-27, 1996

L. Briand, C. Differding, D. Rombach:Practical Guidelines for Measurement-based Process Improvement, Proceed-ings of the International SoftwareConsulting Network Conference(ISCN’96), Brighton, UK, December1996

C. Bunse, E. Kamsties:Integrating SCR Requirements into

10th European Software MaintenanceWorkshop, Durham, UK, September22-25, 1996

C. Gresse, H.D. Rombach, G. Ruhe:A Practical Approach for BuildingGQM-Based Measurement - LessonsLearned From Three Industrial CaseStudies, Proceedings of the X BrazilianSymposium on Software Engineering,pp. 2-44, Sao Carlos, Brazil, October1996

B. Heumann, T. Leidig, P. Rösch:GLASS-Studio: An Open AuthoringEnvironment for Distributed Multime-dia Applications, Proceedings of theEuropean Workshop on InteractiveDistributed Multimedia Systems andServices, IEEE Computer Society Press,pp. 45-58, Berlin, Germany,March1996

T. Leidig, P. Rösch:Authoring MHEG Presentations withGLASS-Studio, Proceedings of theInternational Workshop on Multime-dia Software Development, 1996, IEEEComputer Society Press, Berlin, Ger-many, March 1996, pp. 150-158, heldtogether with the 18th InternationalConference on Software

F. van Latum, M. Ovio, B. Hoisl, G.Ruhe:No Improvement Without Feedback:Experiences From Goal-Oriented Mea-surement at Schlumberger, Proceed-ings of the Fifth European Workshopon Software Process Technology(EWSPT’96), Nancy, France, October1996, Lecture Notes in Computer Sci-ence, Vol.1149, pp. 67-182

P. Rösch:User Interaction in a Multi-ViewDesign Environment, Proceedings ofthe IEEE Symposium on Visual Lan-guages (VL’96), IEEE Computer Society


Technical Reports

L. Briand, C.Bunse, J. Daly, C. Differd-ing:An Experimental Comparison of theMaintainability of Object-Oriented andStructured Design Documents, ISERN-Report 96-13, October, 1996

L. Briand, C. Differding, D. Rombach:Practical Guidelines for Measurement-based Process Improvement, ISERN-Report 96-05, 1996

S. Cinti, A. Fugetta, C. Gresse:Customized Establishment of Mea-surement Programs - CEMP, IESE, IESE-Report 01.96/E, July, 1996

C. Differding, D. Rombach:Kontinuierliche Software-Qualitäts-verbesserung in der industriellen Praxis, Internal Report 282/96, Univer-sity of Kaiserslautern, 1996

C. Differding, B. Hoisl, C. Lott:GQM Technology Package, InternalReport 281/96, University of Kaisers-lautern, 1996

K. El Emam, L. Briand, R. Smith:Assessor Agreement in Rating SPICEProcesses, IESE 1996, September1996, ISERN-Report 96-09

K. El Elmam, S. Quintin, N. H. Mad-havji:User Participation in the RequirementsEngineering Process, REJ, 1996, 1, 1,4-26

C. Lott:A Controlled Experiment to EvaluateOn-line Process Guidance, Universityof Kaiserslautern, April 1996

C. Lott:Measurement-Based Feedback in aProcess-Centered Software Engineer-

ment, Proceedings of the Workshopon the Advances in Methodology andSoftware in Decision Support Systems,Laxenburg, Austria, September 1996,pp. 44-46

M. Verlage:Erfahrungen bei der Formalisierungvon Projekthandbüchern, Tagungs-band der GI/OCG Jahrestagung Infor-matik ‘96,Oldenbourg VerlagMünchen - Wien, September 1996,pp.383-402

Press, Boulder Colorado, USA,September 1996

D. Rombach:Descriptive Software Process Modeling- A first step towards improvement,Seminar, Summerschool of the Univer-sity of Bari, Bari, Italy, June 03, 1996.

D. Rombach:Introduction to Measurement, Presen-tation and Moderation of Measure-ment Symposium, First EuropeanSEPG, Amsterdam, Netherlands, June24, 1996.

D. Rombach:Cleanroom Past, Present and Future:Predictions and Prophecies, 3rd Inter-national Conference on CleanroomSoftware Engineering Practices, Panelpresentation, College Park, MD, USA,October 10-11, 1996

D. Rombach:Position Paper on Experimentation,Measurement Workshop, InternationalConference on Software Maintenance,Monterey, USA, November 09, 1996

G. RuheQualitative Analysis of Software Engi-neering Data Using Rough Sets. Pro-ceedings of the Fourth InternationalWorkshop of Rough Sets, Fuzzy Setsand Machine Discovery (RSFD ‘96),November 1996, Tokyo, Japan, pp292-299

G. Ruhe:Rough Set-Based Data Analysis inGoal-Oriented Software Measure-ment, Proceedings of the Third Inter-national Software Metrics Symposium,Berlin, Germany, March 1996, IEEEComputer Society Press, pp. 10-19

G. Ruhe:Rough Set Based Decision Support inGoal-Oriented Software Measure-


Presentations

L. Briand:Measuring Software Complexity,ICSE'96, Panel on Software Complexi-ty Measurement, Berlin, Germany,March 1996

C. Bunse:Reviews und Inspektionen, SoftQuali-Meeting, Heidelberg, Germany, July11, 1996

Peter Rösch:Authoring MHEG Presentations withGLASS-Studio, International Workshopon Multimedia Software Development,(workshop at ICSE'96), Berlin, Ger-many, March 25-26, 1996

D. Rombach:Software-Entwicklungs-Know-how.Ein entscheidender Faktor für dieindustrielle Wettbewerbsfähigkeit.Kolloquium, Institut für Techno- undWirtschaftsmathematik e.V. (ITWM),Trier, Germany, September 25, 1996

G. Ruhe:How to Organize a Repository of BestPractices in Software Engineering: AStudy for the European Software Insti-tute, STTI-94-01-E

G. Ruhe:Kosten-Vorhersagemodelle alsBestandteil unternehmensweiterErfahrungsdatenbanken, Kolloquium,Fachbereich Informatik, UniversitätKaiserslautern, Germany, Juni 1996

ing Environment, Internal Report283/96, University of Kaiserslautern,1996

S. Morasca, G. Ruhe:A Comparative Study of Two Tech-niques for Analyzing Software Mea-surement Data, ISERN-Report 96-07

J. Reinert, H.-P. Steiert:Objektorientierte Softwareentwick-lung, IESE 1996, December 1996,IESE-Report 03.96/D

M. Verlage:Erfahrungen bei der Formalisierungvon Projekthandbüchern, FachbereichInformatik Universität Kaiserslautern,1996, Bericht des Sonderforschungs-bereich 501, Nr. 08/96, August 1996

I. Wieczorek:Aufbau und Durchführung einesMessprogramms bei der Robert BoschGmbH, Software-Technology-Transfer-Initiative Kaiserslautern, 1996, STTI-96-01-D, University of KaiserslauternPublished in two parts, August 1996


Doctoral Theses

C. M. Lott:Measurement-Based Feedback in aProcess-Centered Software Engineer-ing Environment, Computer Science Department, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA, Advisor: Prof. Dr. Dieter RombachMay 1996

Alfred Bröckers:Modellbasierte Analyse von Software-Projektrisiken, Department of Computer Science,University of Kaiserslautern, Advisor: Prof. Dr. Dieter RombachNovember 1996

Diploma Theses(Diplomarbeiten)

Torsten Armbrecht:Analyse von GQM-Plänen auf Grund-lage von Rough Sets,Department of Computer Science,University of Kaiserslautern, Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Dieter Rombach,Dr. Günther Ruhe, January 1996

F. Gieseke:Entwicklungsunterstützung von JAVA-basierten Multimedia-Präsentationen,Department of Computer Science,University of Kaiserslautern, Supervisor: Peter Rösch, October 1996

M. Jahn:Ein Werkzeug zum Einsatz vonMetriken bei der Bewertung vonobjektorientierten Softwareentwürfen,Department of Computer Science,University of Kaiserslautern, Supervisor: Peter Rösch, September 1996

B. Völker:Entwicklung eines Kernmodells zurUnterstützung von Multi-View-Edi-toren, Department of Computer Sci-ence, University of Kaiserslautern,Supervisor: Peter Rösch, October 1996

Project Theses(Projektarbeiten)

Markus Hoffmann:Plattformunabhängige Werkzeug-unterstützung der Planungsphase desGQM-Prozesses,Department of Computer Science,University of Kaiserslautern,Supervisor: Andreas Birk,September 1996

D. Klein:Ein Werkzeug zur Source Code Trans-formation, Department of Computer Science,University of Kaiserslautern, Supervisor: Christian Bunse, February 1996


External

J.M. DeBaud:Best Paper Award at the 3rd WorkingConference on Reverse Engineering inMonterey, CA, USA, November 9,1996

L. Briand:IEEE Award for an outstanding contri-bution to the organization ofICSM'96, Monterey, CA, USA, Novem-ber 1996

D. Rombach:IEEE Senior Membership Award,December 1996

D. Rombach:IEEE Certificate of Appreciation forhaving served on the IEEE SoftwareMagazine Editorial Board 1992-1996,November 1996

D. Rombach:ACM Recognition of Service Award1996

Internal

C. Gresse:The Fraunhofer IESE 1996 Award forResearch Excellence

F. Huber:The Fraunhofer IESE 1996 Award forTechnical Support Excellence

O. Laitenberger:The Fraunhofer IESE 1996 Award forResearch Excellence

D. Pfahl:The Fraunhofer IESE 1996 Award forProject Excellence

I. Wieczorek:The Fraunhofer IESE 1996 Award forProject Excellence

Awards


Events, Facts, and Photos

Chronicle (highlights)

JanuaryFoundation of the Fraunhofer Institutefor Experimental Software Engineer-ing, January 1

FebruaryOpening ceremony of the FraunhoferIESE, February 14

March18th International Conference onSoftware Engineering, ICSE 18,Berlin, March 25

Presentation of the Fraunhofer IESE atthe International Conference on Soft-ware Engineering ICSE 18, Berlin,March

MayPress conference (together withMarkant Südwest Software- undDienstleistungs GmbH), Kaiserslautern,May 91) Presentation of the newly-foundedMarkant Südwest Software- undDienstleistungs GmbH2) Information about the collaborationbetween Markant Südwest Software-und Dienstleistungs GmbH and Fraun-hofer IESE

AugustSigning of the collaborationagreement between CAESAR andFraunhofer IESE, August 27

SeptemberTalk by Prof. Dr. David Lorge Parnas,”Mathematical Description and Speci-fication of Software”, September 2

Talk by Prof. Dr. Thomas Seewaldt,”Psychology of Social Systems and theProfessionalization of SoftwareTeams”, September 19

First meeting of the IESE AdvisoryBoard, Kaiserslautern, September 6

OctoberTalk by Prof. Dr. Gregor Bochmann,”Systematic test development fromsystem specifications including real-time aspects”, October 8

Talk by Reidar ConradI, "SPIQ: A Revised Agenda for SoftwareProcess Support”, October 11Presentation by Robert Susmaga,”Combination of Fuzzy Set Theoryand Rough Set Theory to Analysis ofData Containin Uncertainties”, Octo-ber 17

NovemberTalk by Prof. Dr. Ross Jeffery, ”How Can We Reduce Cycle Time andCost? - Opportunities in Software”,November 29

DecemberTalk by Dr. Colin Atkinson, "Towards the Integration of Object-Oriented Notations, Architectures andProcesses", December 9

Election of the IESE deputies for theScientific Advisory Board of the Fraun-hofer Gesellschaft, Kaiserslautern,December 10; elected: Dr. FrankBomarius, Dr. Peter Rösch


Opening of the Fraunhofer IESE,February 14, 1996


Events in Pictures

Prof. Dr. Ross Jeffery, giving a talk about:”How Can We Reduce Cycle Time and Cost? -Opportunities in Software Inspections/TechnicalReviews”November 29, 1996

Prof. Dr. David Lorge Parnas, giving a talk about:”Mathematical Description and Specification ofSoftware”September 2, 1996

Active partnership - even on the soccer field:Soccer team of Q-Labs (in red shirts) and ofFraunhofer IESE after a match.May 11, 1996

Prof. Dr. Thomas Seewaldt (FH Mannheim, Ger-many), giving a talk about:”Psychology of Social Systems and the Profes-sionalization of Software Teams”September 19, 1996

Signing the collaboration agreement betweenCAESAR and Fraunhofer IESEfrom left to right: Prof. Dr. Rombach, Prof. Dr.R. A. Layton, Prof. Dr. Jeffery.August 27, 1996


Hand shake on the occasion of the foundation of the Markant Südwest Software- und Dienst-leistungs GmbH, Kaiserslautern, May 9, 1996From left to right: Franz Mayer, Chairman, Markant Südwest AG; Florian Bernauer, Executive Man-ager, Markant Südwest Software- und Dienstleistungs GmbH; Prof. Dr. Dieter Rombach, FraunhoferIESE; Wolfgang Jacob, Executive Manager, Markant Südwest Software- und Dienstleistungs GmbH;Gerhard Piontek, Mayor of Kaiserslautern.

Prof. Dr. Dieter Rombach, addressing a heart-felt welcome to the participants of the 18thInternational Conference on Software Engi-neering, ICSE 18, Berlin, March 25, 1996

Press conference on the occasion of ICSE 18The panel from left to right: Prof. Ernst Denert,Prof. Dr. Marvin Zelkowitz, Prof. Dr. DieterRombach, Stephan Drooff, Prof. Dr. StefanJähnichen, Prof. Mario Barbacci

Media Coverage of the FraunhoferIESE

Reports and articles about the open-ing of the Fraunhofer IESE and otherIESE-related themes have been pub-lished in the following media:

- Allgemeine Zeitung, 02-15-1996- Blick durch die Wirtschaft,

01-05-1996- Computer Zeitung, 01-18-1996,

03-14-1996- Deutschlandfunk, Forschung aktuell,

03-30-1996- Der Fraunhofer, No. 2/1996- Heizung, Lüftung - Klima

Haustechnik, No. 4/1996- Industrie Anzeiger, 03-11-1996- Mainzer-Rhein-Zeitung, 02-15-1996,

02-16-1996- Maschinen Markt MM, No. 10/1996- Pfälzischer Merkur, 02-15-1996- Rheinpfalz,02-13-1996, 02-15-1996,

05-10-1996- Software Process Improvement and

Practice, 10-18-1996- Software Process Newsletter, No. 7,

Fall 1996- Standort Chemie, No.4/1996- Südwestfunk 1, Rheinland-Pfalz

aktuell, 02-14-1996- The Australian, 08-28-1996- Trierischer Volksfreund, 02-15-1996- Uni-Spectrum Kaiserslautern,

No. 2/1996, 3/1996, 4/1996- VDI-Nachrichten, 03-01-1996- Wirtschaftsmagazin Pfalz,

No. 4/1996- Wissenschaft, Wirtschaft, Politik,

02-21-1996



Humor

When top managers of the Fraun-hofer Gesellschaft come together - onthe occasion of the press conferenceduring the opening of the FraunhoferIESE, Kaiserslautern, February 14,1996

Really, my dear Rombach: Don’t you think yourinstitute’s name turned out to be just a little bittoo long?

Compared to the million lines of code that weusually work with, we found this one to bepleasantly short.

Not at all, my dear Warnecke. My GQM expertshave measured it and found out that it consistsonly of one line approximately this long.


The Research Organization

The Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft is theleading organization of appliedresearch in Germany. It operates 47research institutes with about 8,800employees, about half of them scien-tists and engineers. The research vol-ume for 1996 will amount to over onebillion DM; more than two-thirds ofthis amount is earned through con-tracts from industry and the publicsector (>50% of the industrial earn-ings come from small- and medium-sized enterprises).

International activities are increasinglyimportant. Apart from the collabora-tion with numerous companies andresearch establishments withinEurope, the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaftoperates resource centers andresearch units in the United States andAsia. The Fraunhofer ManagementGesellschaft (FhM) was founded as asubsidiary company in 1990.

The appellation, Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, was chosen in referenceto the researcher, inventor, and entre-preneur Joseph von Fraunhofer (1787- 1826), who won widespread acclaimfor his scientific and commercialachievements.

The Research Fields of the Fraun-hofer-Gesellschaft

Eight fields form the core of Fraun-hofer research:

• Materials and Components• Production Technology• Information and Communication• Microelectronics and Microsystems• Sensor Systems, Testing Technolo-

gies• Process Engineering• Energy, Environment, Health• Technical and Economic Studies

Apart from research services, certifiedtest beds and other facilities can alsobe provided.

Advantages of Contract Researchwith the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft

More than 2,600 experts are availablefor the development of complete sys-tems.

All developments are based on prof-itability considerations.

The Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft collabo-rates with various renowned compa-nies whose research contracts haveresulted in successful products.

Modern laboratory equipment and sci-entific aids such as project manage-ment and internationally-linked com-munications systems enhance thequality of the research work.

Detailed project reports, instructionsfor use, staff training, and completeintroduction strategies for new tech-nologies round off the contractresearch services.

Reliability, continuity, and service of alarge organization are available to allcompanies.

The Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft


Collaboration with the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft

Contract research with the Fraun-hofer-Gesellschaft has advantages forall companies. Orders come from allbranches of industry and from compa-nies of all sizes. The institutes' facili-ties are particularly recommended forsmall businesses who can take advan-tage of Fraunhofer research whentheir own capacities are not sufficientto develop on their own the technicalinnovations necessary to stay competi-tive.

Executive Board

Prof. Hans-Jürgen Warnecke, PresidentDr. Dirk-Meints Polter, PersonnelDr. Hans-Ulrich Wiese, Legal Depart-ment

Accounting Department Address

Fraunhofer-GesellschaftLeonrodstraße 54D-80636 München, GermanyTel +49 89 1205-577, -544Fax +49 89 1205-317email: [email protected]: http://www.fhg.de

Fraunhofer locations

MagdeburgTeltow

Halle

Berlin

Potsdam

Dortmund

SchmallenbergAachen

Euskirchen

Darmstadt

JenaChemnitz

Dresden

ItzehoeRostock

Bremen

Hanover

Brunswick

Kaiserslautern

Stuttgart

Freiburg

Würzburg

Nuremberg

Garmisch-Partenkirchen

Holzkirchen

KarlsruheSaarbrücken

Weil,Wintersweiler

Hamburg

Duisburg

WildauClausthal-Zellerfeld

Ilmenau

Erlangen

Oberpfaffenhofen

Pfinztal

St. Ingbert USA: Ann Arbor, Michigan Boston, Massachusetts Hialeah, Florida Newark, Delaware Providence, Rhode Island

Asia: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Singapore Beijing, China

MunichFreising

Wertheim

Switzerland: Tägerwilen (Bodensee)


Fraunhofer Institute forExperimental Software EngineeringSauerwiesen 6D-67661 KaiserslauternTel: +49(0)6301/707-100Fax: +49(0)6301/707-200E-Mail: [email protected]

Our web server offers up-to-dateinformation about the institute. Weinvite you to visit our web site at:http://www.iese.fhg.de

How to reach us:

• by carcoming from the west (Saarbrück-en) or the east (Mannheim) onhighway (Autobahn) A6. Take theexit"Kaiserslautern-West“ and fol-low the signs that read "Lautereck-en". About 500 m after exiting thehighway, turn left to "Siegelbach".Follow the road leading through aforest. Right after entering "Siegel-bach" you turn right at the firstjunction into the street "Sauer-wiesen". After about 100 m youfind IESE on your right-hand side.

• by trainfrom Kaiserslautern railway stationeither by taxi (ca. 8 km) or by bus(line RSW 6510, departing frombus stop A/2 at railway station,destination: Siegelbach) to Siegel-bach; the stop "Siegelbach Sand"is about 100 m from the institute

• by airplaneAirport Frankfurt/Main, either bytrain (about 2 hours) or by car(about 1.5 hours)

Fraunhofer IESE Contact

Kaiserslautern

✈

H

H

15

Siegelbach

Sauer-

wiesen

Hauptbahnhof

nach Mannheim,Frankfurt/M.

A 6

AusfahrtKaiserslautern-West

B 270

Erlenbach

Morlautern6510

7, 6510

nach Lauterecken

nach Saarbrücken

B 270

Opelkreisel

Pariser

Str.

Opelstr.

Zentrum

Siegelbach Sand

Universität

Tripp

stadte

r Str.

Pfaf

fenb

erg-

str.

Im Dunkel-

tälchen

P.-Ehrlich-

G.-Daimler-

Str.

E.-Schrö-

Str.

ding

er-

Str.

Lämmches- berg

Bännjerrück

Hohen-ecken Hohenecker

Str.

Königs

tr.

Fischer-rück

Engelshof


Fraunhofer IESE Contact

Dial Phone No. +49(0)6301/707- . . . Prof. Dr. Dieter [email protected]

Dr. Günther Ruhe Deputy DirectorDepartment Head ZDÖP (Central Services and Publicly-funded Projects)[email protected]

Dr. Frank BomariusDepartment Head IQVP(Industrial Quality Improvement Projects)[email protected]

Dr. Lionel BriandDepartment Head QPE(Quality and Process Engineering)[email protected]

Dr. Jean-Marc DeBaudDepartment Head ISE(Innovative Software Engineering)[email protected]

Dr. Klaus HörmannCenter for Small and Medium Enterprises (SME)[email protected]

Joachim Müller-KlinkPublic [email protected]

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