The CREST Report
Howard University's Center for Research in Evaluating Software Technology
February 1997
In This Issue ...
- Research with Fannie Mae
- RST donates software tools
- CREST at EASE in the UK
- Technical reports now available
CREST does empircal research for Fannie Mae
Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) Vice President LeRoy
Pingho is committed to reducing the cost of a typical mortgage by
reducing associated IT costs. To that end, he has requested CREST's help
in examining the way that Fannie Mae handles its software problems.
Fannie Mae supports its dozens of internal software applications with a
central telephone help line. To make both the help line and maintenance
support more effective, Fannie Mae has provided CREST researchers with
data from several months of problem reports. A CREST team, led by Dr.
Shari Lawrence Pfleeger, Dr. Peter Keiller and graduate student Ying
Dang, is analyzing the data to determine ways for Fannie Mae to be more
responsive in fixing problems and more effective in performing
maintenance. The team will document its analysis techniques and
recommendations on a CREST technical report, available is Summer 1997.
Trimble leads CREST requirements research
The Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) is also opening
some of its requirements documents to CREST's scrutiny. Led by Dr. John
Trimble, a CREST team will highlight areas where the requirements
process is effective, and will look for ways to improve requirements
analysis at Fannie Mae. Drs. Trimble and Pfleeger have a great deal of
experience with requirements analysis and improvement. Trimble has been
using systems dynamics techniques, combined with knowledge acquisition
methods, to improve requirements-gathering. Dr. Pfleeger has been
working with Suzanne Robertson of the Atlantic Systems Guild to develop
techniques for ensuring that requirements are consistent, complete and
measureable. Drs. Trimble and Pfleeger will compare Fannie Mae's
documents to a requirements template devloped by James and Suzanne
Robertson; you can view this template at https://www.atlasysguild.com
Keiller analyzed failure data
Dr. Peter Keiller and graduate student Claude Charles have developed
software that looks for patterns and trends in failure data. The
Exploratory Data Analysis Toolkit (EDAT) is written in C and runs on a
PC. It used Laplace cofactors and arithmetic trend analysis to look for
reliability growth. It also produces charts and plots that illustrate
the patterns identified.
Dr. Keiller and Mr. Charles have uncovered some interesting
relationships. For example, in their data, 50% of the failures occur
during only 30% of the test time. Further investigation is needed to
determine how to use this information to make the testing process more
effective.
For more information about EDAT, contact Dr. Keiller at
[email protected]
Spring Seminar Series
The schedule for this seminar is available on the CREST home page, or by
phoning Howard University at 202 806-4831. This semester's speakers
include Dr. Charles Pfleeger (Trusted Information Systems, Inc.) on
computer security, Dr. John Trimble (CREST) on simulating software
engineering processes, Mr. Charles Howell (Sun Microsystems) on Java,
Dr. Victor Basili (Universoty of Maryland) on requirements instepection,
Ms. Deborah Cooper (DMCooper Associates) on formal aspects of security,
and Dr. Mary Dee Harris (Language Technologies, Inc.) on natural
language processing. In addition, we are arranging a special
presentation by Bruce Barnes, Deputy Director of Computing and
Computational Research at the National Science Foundation; he will tell
us about NSF programs, and run a workshop on proposal-writing. Watch the
CREST home page for details, of phone 202 806-4831.
RST provides research tools
Reliable Software Technologies, Inc. of Sterling, Virginia, has supplied
CREST researchers with testing and metrics tools from their White Box
tool suite to support our research. We hope to use the metrics tool to
perform static code analysis, and the testing tools to compare fault
injection with other quality assurance techniques.
Descriptions of the tools can be found at https://www.rstcorp.com. Dr.
Jeffrey Voas, one of RST's founders and a pioneer in software
testability, is also encouraging CREST's students to work at RST during
the summer. In the future, RST and CREST will pursue joint work that
evaluates the effecitvenness of testing techniques and tools.
New! CREST technical reports
The following reports are available on our web site, or in hard copy by
request.
- "Making software development investment decisions," by John Favaro
(Intecs Sistemi, Pisa, Italy) and Shari Lawrence Pfleeger. This
technical report reviews the way in which software developers
traditionally evaluate return on investment, showing that the methods
are misleading or incomparable. The authors suggest that Net Present
value is more appropriate for comparing software investment with other
corporate investment options. (Technical report number 9701.)
- "Experiments on Program Reengineering and Comprehension" by Ronald
J. Leach. Pleszkoch, Linger, and Hevner described a restructuring
process that produces an equivalent system that is both structured and
has fewer non-traverable paths. This technical report describes the
results of a series of experiments on the effect of this type of program
restructuring on program comprehension. Leach also discusses
experimentation in an academic environment. (Technical report number
9702.)
New course on research methods
Howard's Department of Systems and Computer Science has created a new
course, Research Methods, open to graduate students and advanced
undergraduates. Taught by Dr. Shari Lawrence Pfleeger, the course
focuses on how to perform empircal research in computer science and
software engineering. The first part of the course is an overview of
investigative techniques, including experiments, case studies and
surveys. The students examine many examples of empirical research
published in the literature, including papers produced by CREST
affiliates. The second part of the course involves real research:
analyzing real datasets to determine relationships and to suggest
hypotheses for further studies. In the last part of the course, the
students present four papers that report on empirical research in a
chosen aspect of computer science; this semester, some of the topics are
cost estimation, performance modeling, and object-oriented development.
The students not only explain what research has been done but also
assess the quality of the research. The course prepares students to do
their own research and also to read the work of others with a skeptical
eye. The best student presentations and reports will be issued as CREST
technical reports.
CREST at EASE
Two CREST researchers will be attending the EASE conference (Empirical
Assessment of Software Engineering) in Keele, England, hosted by Dr.
Barbara Kitchenham and her colleagues at the University of Keele (a
CREST affiliate). Dr. Shari Lawrence Pfleeger will be delivering the
keynote address, speaking about measuring the business value of
information technology. Dr. Ronald Leach will be presenting the results
of his experiments on program reengineering and comprehension. Others
speakers at EASE will be Dr. H. Dieter Rombach, directory of the
Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering (a CREST
affiliate) and Dr. Marvin Zelkowitz, co-director of the NASA-Goddard
Software Engineering Laboratory. The next CREST report will summarized
the key points made at EASE.
New CREST publications and presentations
- Software Reuse: Methods, Models and Costs, McGraw-Hill
1997. A new book by Ronald J. Leach that focuses on the pratical aspects
of software reuse. The book contains a new model of costs that helps
practitioners to assess when reuse is cost-effective.
- IEEE Computer, February 1997. Shari Lawrence Pfleeger and
Les Hatton evaluate the quality of an air traffic control support system
in "Investigating the influence of formal methods."
- IEEE Software, March 1997. A special issue on measurement,
edited by Shari Lawrence Pfleeger, Ross Jeffrey, Bill Curtis and Barbara
Kitchenham, "A status report on software measurement."
- Advanced is Computers, Academic Press 1997. This annual
book includes a chapter by Shari Lawrence Pfleeger on experimentation
and analysis in software engineering.
Current CREST affiliates
The CREST web site has links to the web pages of our affiliates.
CREST seeks industry and government partners
Both CREST and HUFAST intend to focus on pratical, effective tools and
techniques. To that end, CREST seeks partnerships with industry and
government. An organization can participate at three levels:
- As a CREST Sponsor: By donating $10,000 a year to CREST, a
Sponsor receives announcements of all CREST seminars and workshops, and
a copy of all CREST technical reports.
- As a CREST Partner: By donating $50,000 a year to CREST,
a Partner receives all the benefits of a Sponsor. In addition, the
Partner works with CREST researchers to perform experiments, surveys and
case studies on issues that are critical to Partner's business needs.
CREST researchers will perform data collection and analysis, and work
with the Partner to determine which techniques and tools are most
effective.
- As a CREST Cooperationg Organization: By collaborating on
research grants or donating tools for student use, a Cooperating
Organization works directly with CREST researchers and shares the
benefits of the results.
Current CREST industrial and government partners include the Federal
National Mortgage Association, Reliable Software Technologies, American
Management Systems, Mitretek Systems, The Air Force Office of Scientific
Research, the National Science Foundation, and the National Institure
for Standards and Technology. Links to these organiztions can be found
at our CREST web site.
In future issues ...
- Checking out object-orientation
- CREST presentations at EASE
- The HUFAST and ADMI conferences
- HUFAST's summer visitors
- New CREST industrial partners
- Trimble's process simulation research