A. Winsor Brown

WikiWinWin: A Wiki Based System for Collaborative Requirements Negotiation

Defining requirements is one of the most critical activities in the development of software intensive systems. The EasyWinWin system has been very good in capturing initial requirements involving heterogeneous stakeholders in over 150 client-developer requirements negotiations. However, it has been less easy to use in updating requirements and related information as a project proceeds and adapting to the evolving nature of the requirements. Because our clients are finding that wikis are easier to learn and use, and can organize information in a flexible and updatable manner, we have developed an initial version of a WikiWinWin system as a potential successor to EasyWinWin. We have conducted a case study of WikiWinWin, and the result shows that the initial WikiWinWin is basically good at facilitating stakeholder collaborative negotiation and learning, but has some limitations that we are now addressing.

Spiral development of software-intensive systems of systems

Commercial, public service, and national security organizations are finding it increasingly attractive to integrate component system capabilities from many different best of breed sources to achieve their objectives. In doing so, they find that they are increasingly dependent on software to integrate the systems and to rapidly adapt them in response to competitive opportunities or threats, new technologies, or new organizational priorities. The resulting software-intensive systems of systems (SISOS) offer significant benefits, but come with significant new types of risks, such as simultaneous satisfaction of multiple stakeholders and quality attributes, and integration and rapid adaptation of multiple heterogeneous software products and COTS products. This tutorial provides software engineers, managers and researchers with an understanding of and emerging capabilities for practicing software engineering in the very large. It identifies the major opportunities and risks involved in software- intensive systems of systems, presents experience-based techniques for realizing the opportunities and mitigating the risks. It provides extensions of the risk-driven spiral model that are being used for SISOS development processes, and provides case study exercises to give participants experience in applying the techniques in representative situations.

SOFTWARE COST ESTIMATION IN THE INCREMENTAL COMMITMENT MODEL

Complex, software intensive systems — especially those with multiple software component developers — and Directed System of Systems (DSOS) or Acknowledged Systems of Systems (ASOS) need approaches to control the development and estimate the software development costs and schedules. This paper will introduce a next-generation synthesis of the spiral model and other leading process models into the Incremental Commitment Model (ICM). The ICM emphasizes architecting systems (or DSOSs) to encapsulate subsystems (or systems) undergoing the most rapid change, and having agile systems engineers handle longer-range change traffic to rebaseline the plans for future increments. Systems engineers do this, while largely plan-driven teams develop and continuously verify and validate (V&V) the current increment, as is usually required for safe or secure software. Our approach for estimating software development cost of systems is the Constructive Incremental Commitment Cost Model (COINCOMO) and its tool, which currently implements together in one tool the Constructive Cost Model (COCOMO II), and the Constructive Phased Schedule and Effort Model (COPSEMO).