By Douglas C. Schmidt
Chief Technology Officer

A key mission of the SEI is to advance the practice of software engineering and cyber security through research and technology transition to ensure the development and operation of software-reliant Department of Defense (DoD) systems with predictable and improved quality, schedule, and cost. To achieve this mission, the SEI conducts research and development (R&D) activities involving the DoD, federal agencies, industry, and academia. One of my initial blog postings summarized the new and upcoming R&D activities we had planned for 2011. Now that the year is nearly over, this blog posting presents some of the many R&D accomplishments we completed in 2011.

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By Felix Bachmann,
Senior Member of the Technical Staff,
Research, Technology, and System Solutions

Bursatec, the technology arm of Groupo Bolsa Mexicana de Valores (BMV, the Mexican Stock Exchange), recently embarked on a project to replace three existing trading engines with one system developed in house. Given the competitiveness of global financial markets and recent interest in Latin American economies, Bursatec needed a reliable and fast new system that could work ceaselessly throughout the day and handle sharp fluctuations in trading volume. To meet these demands, the SEI suggested combining elements of its Architecture Centric Engineering (ACE) method, which requires effective use of software architecture to guide system development, with its Team Software Process (TSP), which teaches software developers the skills they need to make and track plans and produce high-quality products. This posting—the first in a two-part series—describes the challenges Bursatec faced and outlines how working with the SEI and combining ACE with TSP helped them address those challenges.

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Part 2: SEI R&D Activities Related to Sustaining Software for the DoD
By Douglas C. Schmidt,
Deputy Director, Research, and Chief Technology Officer

Software sustainment is growing in importance as the inventory of DoD systems continues to age and greater emphasis is placed on efficiency and productivity in defense spending. In part 1 of this series, I summarized key software sustainment challenges facing the DoD.  In this blog posting, I describe some of the R&D activities conducted by the SEI to address these challenges.

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By Rick Kazman,
Visiting Scientist, Research Technology & System Solutions

The SEI has long advocated software architecture documentation as a software engineering best practice.  This type of documentation is not particularly revolutionary or different from standard practices in other engineering disciplines. For example, who would build a skyscraper without having an architect draw up plans first?  The specific value of software architecture documentation, however, has never been established empirically. This blog describes a research project we are conducting to measure and understand the value of software architecture documentation on complex software-reliant systems.

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