Jul 2
2012
By Douglas C. Schmidt
Principal Researcher
While agile methods have become popular in commercial software development organizations, the engineering disciplines needed to apply agility to mission-critical software-reliant systems are not as well defined or practiced. To help bridge this gap, the SEI recently hosted the Agile Research Forum, which brought together researchers and practitioners from around the world to discuss when and how to best apply agile methods in the mission-critical environments found in government and many industries. This blog posting, the first in a multi-part series, highlights key ideas and issues associated with applying agile methods to address the challenges of complexity, exacting regulations, and schedule pressures that were presented during the forum.
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May 28
2012
By Douglas C. Schmidt
Principal Researcher
Happy Memorial Day. As part of an ongoing effort
to keep you informed about our latest work, I'd like to let you know
about some recently published SEI technical reports and notes. These
reports highlight the latest work of SEI technologists in architecture analysis, patterns for insider threat monitoring, source code analysis and insider threat security reference architecture.
This post includes a listing of each report, author(s), and links where
the published reports can be accessed on the SEI website.
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May 7
2012
Part 2: Understanding Success Drivers
By Douglas C. Schmidt,
Principal Researcher
Common operating platform environments (COPEs) are reusable software infrastructures that incorporate open standards; define portable interfaces, interoperable protocols, and data models; offer complete design disclosure; and have a modular, loosely coupled, and well-articulated software architecture that provides applications and end users with many shared capabilities. COPEs can help reduce recurring engineering costs, as well as enable developers to build better and more powerful applications atop a COPE, rather than wrestling repeatedly with tedious and error-prone infrastructure concerns. Despite technical advances during the past decade, however, building affordable and dependable COPE-based solutions for the DoD remains elusive. This blog posting—the second in a three-part series—builds upon the first posting to describe key success drivers for COPEs that proactively and intentionally exploit commonality across multiple DoD acquisition programs.
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Apr 30
2012
Part 1: Doing More for Less
By Douglas C. Schmidt,
Principal Researcher
Mission-critical operations in the Department of Defense (DoD) increasingly depend on complex software-reliant systems-of-systems (abbreviated as “systems” below). These systems are characterized by a rapidly growing number of connected platforms, sensors, decision nodes, and people. While facing constrained budget, expanded threat, and engineering workforce challenges, the DoD is trying to obtain greater efficiency and productivity in defense spending needed to acquire and sustain these systems. This blog posting—the first in a three-part series—motivates the need for DoD common operating platform environments that can help collapse today’s stove-piped solutions to decrease costs, spur innovation, and increase acquisition and operational performance.
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Mar 19
2012
By Douglas C. Schmidt
Principal Researcher
As
part of an ongoing effort to keep you informed about our latest work,
I'd like to let you know about some recently published SEI technical
reports and notes. These reports highlight the latest work of SEI
technologists in embedded systems, risk management, risk-based measurement and analysis, early lifecycle cost estimation, and techniques for detecting data anomalies.
This post includes a listing of each report, author(s), and links where
the published reports can be accessed on the SEI website.
Read more...
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