Feb 25
2013
By Bill Scherlis
SEI Principal Researcher and Director, Institute for Software Research
Some
of the principal challenges faced by developers, managers, and
researchers in software engineering and cybersecurity involve measurement and evaluation. In two previous blog posts,
I summarized some features of the overall SEI Technology Strategy. This
post focuses on how the SEI measures and evaluates its research program
to help ensure these activities address the most significant and
pervasive problems for the Department of Defense (DoD). Our goal is to
conduct projects that are technically challenging and whose solution
will make a significant difference in the development and operation of
software-reliant systems. In this post we’ll describe the process used
to measure and evaluate the progress of initiated projects at the SEI to
help maximum their potential for success.
Read more...
Feb 4
2013
By Bill Scherlis
SEI Principal Researcher and Director, Institute for Software Research
The Department of Defense (DoD) has become deeply reliant on software. As a federally funded research and development center (FFRDC),
the SEI is chartered to work with the DoD to meet the challenges of
designing, producing, assuring, and evolving software-reliant systems in
an affordable and dependable manner. This blog post is the second in a
multi-part series that describes key elements of our forthcoming
Strategic Research Plan that address these challenges through research,
acquisition support, and collaboration with the DoD, other federal
agencies, industry, and academia. The first post
in this series focused on Architecture-Led Incremental Iterative
Development. This part focuses on the remaining three elements of our
strategic plan: (1) designed-in security and quality (evidence-based
software assurance), (2) a set of DoD critical component capabilities
relating to cyber-physical systems (CPS), autonomous systems, and big
data analytics, and (3) cybersecurity tradecraft and analytics.
Read more...
Jan 7
2013
First in a Series
By Bill Scherlis
Chief Technology Officer, Acting
The Department of Defense (DoD) has become deeply and fundamentally reliant on software. As a federally funded research and development center (FFRDC),
the SEI is chartered to work with the DoD to meet the challenges of
designing, producing, assuring, and evolving software-reliant systems in
an affordable and dependable manner. This blog post—the first in a
multi-part series—outlines key elements of the forthcoming SEI Strategic
Research Plan that addresses these challenges through research and
acquisition support and collaboration with DoD, other federal agencies,
industry, and academia.
Read more...
Jun 4
2012
By Bill Scherlis,
Chief Technology Officer (Acting)
SEI
The
extent of software in Department of Defense (DoD) systems has increased
by more than an order of magnitude every decade. This is not just
because there are more systems with more software; a similar growth
pattern has been exhibited within individual, long-lived military systems. In recognition of this growing software role, the Director of Defense Research and Engineering (DDR&E, now ASD(R&E)) requested the National Research Council (NRC) to undertake a study of defense software producibility,
with the purpose of identifying the principal challenges and developing
recommendations regarding both improvement to practice and priorities
for research. The NRC appointed a committee, which I chaired, that
included many individuals well known to the SEI community, including Larry Druffel, Doug Schmidt, Robert Behler, Barry Boehm,
and others. After more than three years of effort—which included an
intensive review and revision process—we issued our final report, Critical Code: Software Producibility for Defense. In the year and a half since the report was published, I have been asked to brief it extensively to the DoD and the Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) communities.
This blog posting, the first in a series, highlights several of the
committee’s key findings, specifically focusing on three areas of
identified improvements to practice—areas where the committee judged
that improvements both are feasible and could substantially help the DoD
to acquire, sustain, and assure software-reliant systems of all kinds.
Read more...
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