Improve Software Productivity Research Articles

Promoting Software Reuse Using Self Organizing Maps

Reusability of software, regardless of its utilizing technique, is widely believed to be a promising means for improving software productivity and reliability. However it is not practiced adequately due to the lack of techniques that facilitate the locating of reusable components that are functionally close. In this paper we apply Kohonen‘s Self-Organizing Maps to develop an approach for promoting Software Reuse. We look at the details of how Self-Organization can arrange and regularize data from the original pattern space into a topology preserving map. We describe a practical implementation of the SOM methodology for Software Reuse using a database of UNIX commands. And finally we briefly present our proposed Software Reuse Methodology.

A New Integrated Software Development Environment Based on SDL, MSC, and CHILL for Large-scale Switching Systems

This paper presents a new software development environment that supports an integrated methodology for covering all phases of software development and gives integrated methods with tools for ITUT (Telecommunication Standardization Section of the International Telecommunication Union) languages. The design of the environment to improve software productivity and quality is based on five main concepts: 1) formal specifications based on SDL (Specification and Description Language) and MSC (Message Sequence Charts) in the design phase, 2) verification and validation of those designs by tools, 3) automatic code generation and a safe separate compilation scheme based on CHILL (CCITT High-Level Language) to facilitate programming-in-the-many and programming-in-the-large. 4) debugging of distributed real-time concurrent CHILL programs, and 5) simulation of application software for integrated testing on the host machine based on CHILL. The application results of the environment compared with other approaches show that the productivity is increased by 19 % because of decreasing implementation and testing cost, and the quality is increased by 83 % because of the formal specifications with its static and dynamic checking facilities.

A model for software reuse

Software reusability is widely believed to be a key to help overcome the ongoing software crisis by improving software productivity and quality. New computer technology and the demands of an advancing society require new and more complicated software. It is unrealistic to expect that every software system can be developed solely reusing existing software; however, software reusability has proven to be a way of enhancing software productivity and quality in different organizations. It is also believed that reuse of code segments alone does not significantly reduce software development effort. By creating reuse support information while software is being developed (when the software is best known to software developers), the reuse effort for both software development and maintenance can be potentially reduced. In this paper, five types of RSI are presented: Semantic Web, Horizontal Web, Vertical Web, Syntactic Web, and Alternative Web. We collectively call these five webs a Quintet Web. The Semantic Web enables software developers to locate a software segment. The Horizontal Web provides a means to reuse a block of soflware along with other types of software from other phases of a development process. The inter-phase integration of software can be performed through this Web. The Vertical Web identifies the vertical relationship of a software block to its operational environment. The Syntactic Web locates all statements in which a variable is used. The Alternative Web provides alternative software blocks that perform an identical operation. A prototype of the Quintet Web is presented.

Measuring Productivity of Software Projects: A Data Envelopment Analysis Approach

Current economic conditions are forcing information system departments to focus simultaneously on decreasing costs while increasing software productivity. Improving software productivity is becoming critical because software costs of large in‐house software companies have been increasing rapidly. For many organizations, however, measuring software productivity has been a difficult task. Using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), this research study investigates the productivity of 78 commercial system projects. The results of this study have practical implications for software project managers undertaking software development. The results showed that the DEA technology can be successfully used to identify efficient and inefficient software projects. Furthermore, within the inefficient group, DEA can also identify factors that affect software productivity in a positive or negative manner, allowing managers to take corrective actions. Based on the findings of this study, the manuscript also provides some practical guidelines for managers to follow in software development.

Point counterpoint: do standards improve quality?

Software standards are only one of many factors that influence quality. However, there is ample evidence to suggest that, on balance, standards and their related guides and recommended practices do improve product quality. The paper discusses some examples of standards that improve software product quality. It considers whether imperfect standards are better than none at all.

Determining software schedules

Improving software productivity, shortening schedules or time to market, and improving quality are prominent topics in software journals in both contributed articles and advertising copy. Unfortunately, most of these articles and advertisements have dealt with software schedules, productivity, or quality factors in abstract terms. Now we can measure these factors with reasonable accuracy and collect empirical data on both average and best-in-class results. We are particularly interested in the wide performance gaps between laggards, average enterprises, and industry leaders, as well as differences among the various software domains. The function-point metric lets us establish a meaningful database of software performance levels. A simple algorithm raises function points to a total to obtain a useful first-order schedule estimate.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>

MEASUREMENT SUPPORT IN SOFTWARE ENGINEERING ENVIRONMENTS

The use of empirical data to understand and improve software products and software engineering processes is gaining ever increasing attention. Empirical data from products and processes is needed to help an organization understand and improve its way of doing business in the software domain. Additional motivation for collecting and using data is provided by the need to conform to guidelines and standards which mandate measurement, specifically the SEI’s Capability Maturity Model and ISO 9000–3. Some software engineering environments (SEEs) offer automated support for collecting and, in a few cases, using empirical data. Measurement will clearly play a significant role in future SEEs. The paper surveys the trend towards supporting measurement in SEEs and gives details about several existing research and commercial software systems.

Practitioner and SoftClass: A comparative study of two software reuse research projects

Software reuse is regarded by many researchers as a key factor to improving software productivity and quality. Software reuse challenges are numerous and require us to rethink the entire spectrum of activities involved in the engineering of software. In this article, we focus on the technical aspects of software reuse, namely, building reusable software, repackaging existing software to make it more readily reusable, and providing computer support for software development with reusable components. We describe two research projects, Practitioner, an ESPRIT-funded collaboration, and SoftClass, a project funded mainly by TANDEM Computers. Both projects attempt to address the above issues, with an emphasis on developing computer tools that support the various reuse activities. The representation of software components is central to both projects. The Practitioner project, which focuses on the early stages of the software life-cycle, has developed tools and representations that support domain analysis activities. SoftClass focuses on the development of representations that lend themselves to computer inferencing for the purposes of supporting design with reusable components. We conclude by summarizing the major technical differences between the projects and discussing other factors that are, in our opinion, equally important to the success of such projects.

特集 電算機応用 情報システム部門の生産性向上

With recent progress of CASE (Computer Aided Software Engineering), it has been put into practical use to mechanize software development and maintenance. However, it is so early for us to change to whole use of CASE that we had to make a steady effort to improve software productivity.This paper describes the following 4 points that Information Systems Department of Daido Steel has improved in the software productivity.a. The software productivity improvement campaign by whole members of Information Systems Department.b. APOLO which is the tool to draw up a knowledge-base of application rule.c. The collection system of man-hour through the software development and maintenance.d. Our concept to utilize CASE.

DDB

In this paper we present an object oriented data model for VLSI/CAD data. A design data manager (DDB) based on such a model has been implemented under the UNIX/C++ environment. It has been used by a set of diverse VLSI/CAD applications of our organization. Benchmarks have shown it to perform better as compared to commercial object oriented database systems. In conjunction with the ease of data access, the data manger served to improve software productivity and a modular program architecture for our CAD system.

Architectures for Large-Scale Reuse

Large-scale reuse of software architectures and components is an important element for improving software productivity and reducing the time needed to design, develop, and deploy software systems. For maximum benefit, the application of reuse technologies must be coupled with effective process changes. In this paper, we focus on AT&T's approach to software reuse, particularly the use of the AT&T BaseWorX™ applications platform to achieve reuse. We also discuss the process changes associated with software reuse, and the results that have been achieved from applying reuse to a wide range of software products.

Software Quality and Productivity Improvement Techniques for Process Computer Systems at Mizushima Works, Kawasaki Steel Corporation

Process computers have a long history of use in the steel industry, where they have made a remarkable contribution to product quality and production efficiency. Moreover, process computer functions have become increasingly sophisticated and complex in response to the requirements of high-level line automation, making the improvement of software quality and productivity an essential task. Since 1987, Kawasaki Steel has actively promoted the development of techniques for the improvement of software productivity. The main software techniques developed are as follows. (1) Autonomous distributed systems An autonomous distributed system was put into practical application in the steel industry for the first time at Mizushima Works, resulting in improved software portability, which had been inadequate with process computer systems in the past. (2) Reuse of software Better efficiency was achieved in software design and production by the use of parts management practices developed for software specifications and programs on the basis of improved software portability. (3) Improved development environment A network system is essential as infrastructure for the reuse of software; a high-speed/highcapacity FDDI was introduced for this purpose. A multi-vendor development environment was constructed by linking process computer systems, workstations, and personal computers. These techniques were applied to a CGL system and to two continuous annealing line systems. The results include a reduction in software bugs and a two-fold increase in productivity. This paper presents an outline of software techniques developed by Kawasaki Steel Corporation.

Acquiring experiences with the modelling and implementation of the project life-cycle process: the PMDB work

Formalising and automating the software life-cycle processes are key factors in the improvement of software productivity. This paper describes the Project Master Database (PMDB) work, three generations of investigations into the modelling and encoding of software life-cycle processes; it briefly describes past activities and concentrates on more recent investigations. It presents an approach to software process modelling based on an object-based model called the PMDB+ model, which includes project elements, relationships between those elements and behavioural descriptions of project life-cycle activities. An overview of the model is presented, together with examples to illustrate the application of the model to existing software processes. It also describes a prototyping exercise that implemented the PMDB+ model in an object-oriented database management system. Key results of these investigations, the impact of process implementations on the architecture of environments, and lessons learnt from the exercises are described.

Software metrics in the process maturity framework

The Contel Technology Center's Software Engineering Laboratory (SEL) has as one of its goals the improvement of software productivity and quality throughout Contel Corporation. The SEL's Process and Metrics Project addresses that goal in part by recommending metrics to be collected on each software development project throughout the corporation. This article suggests a set of metrics for which data are to be collected and analyzed, based on a process maturity framework developed at the Software Engineering Institute. Metrics are to be implemented step by step in five levels, corresponding to the maturity level of the development process. Level 1 metrics provide a baseline for comparison as improvements are sought. Level 2 metrics focus on project management. At the third level, metrics measure the products produced during development, while level 4 metrics capture characteristics of the development process itself to allow control of the process. Finally, the feedback loops of level 5's process metrics permit the metrics to be used to change and improve the development process.

An Asset-Based Systems Development Approach to Software Reusability

Software reusability has been viewed as one of the major opportunity areas for improving software productivity. An overview of software reusability research suggests that the traditionalapproach to software development is inappropriate for the development of reusable software parts. An organizational strategy for making software reusability practical is needed. An asset-based systems development method, based on this strategy, focuses on the development of information assets designed to be reused. It also facilitates identifying, representing, and classifying information assets.

VLSI logic design with logic programming and knowledge-base technology

An approach to VLSI logic design using partial and general structural specifications in addition to behavioral specifications is developed. This approach requires a new style of programming technique, especially if a universal solution procedure for all types of architectures is needed. Knowledge of the design process involves unification of the heterogeneous (i.e. behavior and structure) information between a system and its parts, as well as representation of functional modules in order to ensure their reusability in an efficient manner. Following these strategies, a logic synthesis expert system, ProLogic, is developed, and the system is evaluated using MPU-type VLSIs. It is found that the universal connecting procedure for any compound functional module that unifies the behavioral and structural specifications between a total module and its parts improves logic design efficiency by a factor of 2 and that logic programming, object-oriented frames, and rule bases implemented in ProLogic improve software productivity by a factor of 5.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>

Tools for Building Application Generators

One approach to improving software productivity is to reuse as much existing software as possible. However, straightforward reuse of software is often inappropriate and sometimes inefficient. Application generators (i.e., program generators suitable for a particular application domain) can be used to produce customized code from existing software automatically without any loss in the efficiency of generated code. This paper describes three tools for building application generators: Stage, PG2, and WOODS. In creating application generators, these tools generate underlying translation routines automatically, allowing a programmer to concentrate on the target application domain and not on translation and compiling.

Software Specification and Prototyping Technologies

It has been observed that the challenge of improving software productivity and quality is not just to “do the thing right” but to “do the right thing right.” Doing the right thing means building products and services that meet real customer needs. Specification is the first step in deriving system design from an understanding of customer needs. Technology to support software specification can, therefore, provide productivity and quality benefits that accrue through the entire product life cycle. Prototyping is an approach to system design in which a model of the system is quickly built and iteratively refined so as to become increasingly realistic. Experience with the evolving prototype leads to an improved understanding of system functionality, dynamics, and performance so that the resulting products and services are known to match customer needs before they are built. This article describes two promising approaches — software architecture modeling and application-oriented languages — for improving software development productivity and quality through support for software specification and prototyping.

Understanding and Controlling Software Costs

Abstract Understanding of software costs is important because of the overall magnitude of these costs (in 1985, roughly $70 billion per year in the U.S. and over $140 billion per year worldwide) and because of the fundamental impact software will have on our future quality of life. Section 1 of this paper discusses these issues. Section 2, the main portion of the paper, discusses the two primary ways of understanding software costs. The “black-box” or influence-function approach provides useful experimental and observational insights on the relative software productivity and quality leverage of various management, technical, environmental, and personnel options. The “glass-box” or cost distribution approach helps identify strategies for integrated software productivity and quality improvement programs, via such structures as the value chain and the software productivity opportunity tree. The most attractive individual strategies for improving software productivity identified in Section 2 are: •Writing less code;•Getting the best from people;•Avoiding rework;•Developing and using integrated project support environments. Section 2 provides overall surveys of early and recent progress along these and other lines identified by the opportunity tree. Better understanding of software costs leads to better methods of controlling software project costs, and vice versa. Section 3 discusses these issues. It points out that some good frameworks of techniques exist for controlling software budgets, schedules, and work completed, but that a great deal of further progress is needed to provide an overall set of planning and control techniques covering software product qualities and end-user system objectives.

Understanding and controlling software costs

A discussion is presented of the two primary ways of understanding software costs. The black-box or influence-function approach provides useful experimental and observational insights on the relative software productivity and quality leverage of various management, technical, environmental, and personnel options. The glass-box or cost distribution approach helps identify strategies for integrated software productivity and quality improvement programs using such structures as the value chain and the software productivity opportunity tree. The individual strategies for improving software productivity are identified. Issues related to software costs and controlling them are examined and discussed. It is pointed out that a good framework of techniques exists for controlling software budgets, schedules, and work completed, but that a great deal of further progress is needed to provide an overall set of planning and control techniques covering software product qualities and end-user system objectives.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>