Software management issues for new system designs

Abstract

The management of software development for single and dual processor system designs is making progress towards becoming a mature discipline. A good part of the progress can be attributed to the development and use of standard system and software engineering methods and design principles.However, new computer system designs (networking, distributed systems, embedded systems, multi- and coprocessors, fault tolerant systems, etc.) will create new challenges for managers of software development. The reason for this effect on management is that some of the system and software engineering methods and design principles developed for single and dual processor system designs are not valid for these newer designs.Some of the issues that software development project managers will need to cope with are:1. Life cycle model adjustments2. Rapid prototyping activities3. Different hardware and software phasing4. Increased tool development5. New trade-offs and hybrid developments of off-the-shelf software and newly developed software6. Development of concurrent design principles7. New software design principles to support fault tolerance and the use of new memory technologiesThe above items are just now being recognized as problems, and solutions for them either do not exist, or are not widely known.These problems create a series of new challenges that managers must deal with for software development based on the new architectures and requirements. The purposes of this paper are to discuss these issues and to identify some solutions that can serve in the interim as the technology changes to meet these new challenges.