Pioneers Symposium
The
First 25 Years – The Next 25 Years: On Doing Work of Lasting Value
The Pioneers Symposium
will explore the question "What does it take to do Sofware Engineering
research of enduring value?" Of the many works published in Sofware Engineering
over the past 25 years, relatively few of them remain important today.
Those few works that continue to be worth reading have met the test of
time, demonstrating lasting value to both researchers and practitioners
in the field.
The Pioneers’
Symposium will provide a forum in which Software Engineering’s next generation
has the opportunity to to learn from some of the field's preeminent contributors
what it takes to recognize and to do work that exhibits this kind of lasting
valeu. The Symposium is primarily targeted to graduate students and
new faculty beginning their research or careers. The speakers and attendees
will explore what is needed to do research that will have lasting value
or, as David Parnas has put it, "research that will still be relevant 25
years from now" E.g., What distinguishes such work? What does a researcher
need to know and do to produce such work?
The invited speakers are intellectual pioneers, distinguished
not just for their seminal work, but for blazing trails that others have
continued to find worthwhile to follow. In particular:
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Each has made seminal contributions to Software Engineering’s field of
knowledge that remain important to read and understand today.
Each
has significantly influenced the direction of software engineering research
in one or more important areas of active inquiry
Each has significantly influenced current software
development practices in industry.
Following the talks, attendees will have the
opportunity to discuss the seminar's topic both as a group and individually
with the speakers in a reception to follow.
Grants from the Symposium's sponsors have provided
some funds to support travel and attendance of students or others who might
otherwise have difficulty attending. Please enquire with the the Symposium's
organizers.
Sponsors
The Software Engineering Pioneers Symposium has
been made possible by generous grants from:
Sun Microsystems
The National Science Foundation
Skating to Where the Puck is Going
Prof. Barry Boehm,TRW
Professor of Software Engineering, Computer Science Department
Director, University of Southern California Center for Software Engineering.
Wayne Gretzky found that he became a better hockey
player by skating not to where the puck was or is, but to where it is going.
I've found that doing software engineering work of lasting value also works
better if you invest some effort looking into where the field is going.
In this talk, I'll elaborate on some techniques for doing this, and summarize
some likely future trends in software engineering. I'll illustrate these
with examples, primarily from empirical software studies, software economics,
and software engineering as a value-producing activity.
Barry Boehm is TRW Professor of Software
Engineering, Computer Science Department, USC Director, USC Center for
Software Engineering Dr. Barry Boehm served within the U.S. Department
of Defense (DoD) as director of the DARPA Information Science and Technology
Office and as director of the DDR&E Software and Computer Technology
Office. He worked at TRW, culminating as chief scientist of the Defense
Systems Group, and at the Rand Corporation, culminating as head of the
Information Sciences Department. He entered the software field as a programmer-analyst
at General Dynamics in 1955.
His current research interests include software
process modeling, software requirements engineering, software architectures,
software metrics and cost models, software engineering environments, and
value-based software engineering. His contributions to the field include
the Constructive Cost Model (COCOMO), the Spiral Model of the software
process, and the Theory W (win-win) approach to software management and
requirements determination. He is a Fellow of the ACM, AIAA, IEEE, and
INCOSE, and a member of the US National Academy of Engineering.
Empiricism in Software Engineering
Although
most scientific and engineering disciplines view empiricism as a basic
aspect of their discipline, that view has not been the tradition in software
engineering. There is not the same symbiotic relationship between theory
and empirical study, each feeding the other for the evolution of the discipline.
This talk will provide some discussion of the role of empirical study can
and should play in software engineering and discuss the evolution of empirical
methods and their application over time. It will also offer a vision of
what the future might be. Examples will be taken from my personal experience.
Dr. Victor Basili is Professor of Computer Science at the University
of Maryland, College Park, the Executive Director of the Fraunhofer Center
- Maryland, and one of the founders and principals in the Software Engineering
Laboratory (SEL) at NASA/GSFC. He works on measuring, evaluating, and improving
the software development process and product. He is a recipient of a 1989
NASA Group Achievement Award, a 1990 NASA/GSFC Productivity Improvement
and Quality Enhancement Award, the 1997 Award for Outstanding Achievement
in Mathematics and Computer Science by the Washington Academy of Sciences,
and the 2000 Outstanding Research Award from ACM SIGSOFT. Dr. Basili has
authored over 150 journal and refereed conference papers, has served as
Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE TSE, and as Program Chair and General Chair
of the 6th and 15th ICSE, respectively. He is co-editor-in-chief of the
International Journal of Empirical Software Engineering, published by Kluwer.
He is an IEEE and ACM Fellow.
Being General and Being Specific
One dimension
of thought about software development method is the level of generality.
It is possible to think about development in a way that abstracts from
the specifics of particular problems and aims at results of general validity.
It is also possible to focus your thinking on particular problems and their
characteristics. In this talk I will briefly describe how my approach to
this dimension of software research has changed over the past forty years
or more.
Michael Jackson has worked in software
since 1961. His program design method was adopted as a standard by the
UK government. In the past 15 years he has worked as an independent consultant
and researcher in the UK, the US and many other countries. He worked for
13 years as a part-time researcher at Bell Labs, later AT&T Research,
and holds a patent on an abstract architecture for telecommunication systems.
He has written four books about computer software development, and has
held a number of visiting posts at universities in the UK. He is currently
a visiting Research Professor at the Open University and a visiting Fellow
at the University of Newcastle, and is active in research projects on both
sides of the Atlantic.
Having the Courage Not to Follow the Crowd
There are many paths to having impact in software engineering, and each
may be relevant for different types of people. I will talk about
the path that was appropropriate for me.
Nancy Leveson is Professor of Aerospace Software Engineering
in the Aeronautics and Astronautics Dept. at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology. She also has a joint appointment with the Engineering
Systems Division. Previously she was Boeing Professor of Computer
Science and Engineering at the University of Washington and before that
in the Computer Science Department at the University of California,
Irvine.
She has served as Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Trans. on Software Engineering
and served for many years as an elected member of the Board of
Directors of the Computing Research Association. She is a fellow
of the ACM and received the ACM 1999 Allen Newell Award for "establishing
the foundations of software safety" and the 1995 AIAA Information Systems
Award for "developing the field of software safety and for promoting
responsible software and system engineering practices where life and
property are at stake." She serves on lots of advisory committees,
including the NASA Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel. Dr. Leveson is a member
of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), author of a
large number of papers and a book, "Safeware: System Safety and Computers,"
and co-founder of a company called Safety Engineering Corp.
Title
David's statement
David Parnas
For further information, please contact:
Stuart R Faulk
Lawrence Votta
Computer and Information Science
Distinguished Engineer
University of Oregon
Sun Microsystems Inc.
faulk@cs.uoregon.edu
larry.votta@sun.com