Jul 16
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.
The event brought together researchers and practitioners from around
the world to discuss when and how to best apply agile methods in
mission-critical environments found in government and many industries.
This blog posting, the third installment in a multi-part series
highlighting research presented during the forum, summarizes a
presentation made during the forum by Ipek Ozkaya, a senior researcher in the SEI’s Research, Technology & System Solutions program, who discussed the use of agile architecture practices to manage strategic, intentional technical debt.
Read more...
Feb 6
2012
By Mary Ann Lapham
Senior Member of the Technical Staff
Acquisition Support Program
Over
the past several years, the SEI has explored the use of Agile methods
in DoD environments, focusing on both if and when they are suitable and how to use them most effectively
when they are suitable. Our research has approached the topic of Agile
methods both from an acquisition and a technical perspective. Stephany Bellomo described some of our experiences in previous blog posts What is Agile? and Building a Foundation for Agile.
This post summarizes a project the SEI has undertaken to review and
study Agile approaches, with the goal of developing guidance for their
effective application in DoD environments.
Read more...
Jan 23
2012
By Ipek Ozkaya
Senior Member of the Technical Staff
Research, Technology, and System Solutions
Managing technical debt, which refers to the rework and degraded quality resulting from overly hasty delivery of software capabilities to users, is an increasingly critical aspect of producing cost-effective, timely, and high-quality software products. A delicate balance is needed between the desire to release new software capabilities rapidly to satisfy users and the desire to practice sound software engineering that reduces rework. A previous post described the practice of strategically managing technical debt related to software architecture, which involves deliberately postponing implementation of some architectural design choices to accelerate delivery of the system today and then rearchitecting at a later time. This blog post extends our prior post by discussing how an architecture-focused analysis approach helps manage technical debt by enabling software engineers to decide the best time to rearchitect—in other words, to pay down the technical debt.
Read more...
Dec 19
2011
Acquisition , Acquisition Dynamics , Agile , Architecture Documentation , Architecture Driven Design (ADD) , Binaries , Cyber-physical Systems , Fuzzy Hashing , Handheld Devices , Malware , Measurement & Analysis , Resilience Management Model (RMM) , Safety-Related Requirements , Security-Related Requirements , SEI Research , Software Cost Estimates , Team Software Process (TSP) , Technical Debt
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.
Read more...
May 2
2011
By Ipek Ozkaya
Senior Member of the Technical Staff, Research, Technology, and System Solutions
As industry and government customers demand increasingly rapid
innovation and the ability to adapt products and systems to emerging
needs, the time frames for releasing new software capabilities continue
to shorten. Likewise, Agile software development processes, with their
emphasis on releasing new software capabilities rapidly, are increasing
in popularity beyond their initial small team and project context.
Practices intended to speed up the delivery of value to users, however,
often result in high rework costs that ultimately offset the benefits of
faster delivery, especially when good engineering practices are forgotten along the way. This rework and degrading quality often is referred to as technical debt.
This post describes our research on improving the overall value
delivered to users by strategically managing technical debt, which
involves decisions made to defer necessary work during the planning or
execution of a software project.
Read more...
Recent Comments