David P. Hale

Knowledge, skills and abilities of information systems professionals: past, present, and future

Abstract This study provides information and direction regarding the skills needed by current and future information systems (IS) professionals. Based on information gathered in 1978, 1987, and 1988 through structured interviews with a total of one-hundred-eighty senior information systems managers responsible for planning, training, and hiring IS personnel, the trends in the current and future usefulness to project managers, systems analysts/designers, and programmers of twenty dimensions of knowledge, skill, and ability are evaluated. The results indicate that senior IS managers believe that human factors and managerial knowledge, skills, and abilities have and will continue to increase in importance for all IS professionals, particularly for project managers. The findings also confirm the increasing need to personnel with knowledge of advanced technologies and an increased awareness of the value of information as a corporate resource. Collectively, the results suggests a clearer division of labor among IS professionals, precipitated by advances in technology and their application to ever increasingly complex and ill-structured problems.

Cyclomatic Complexity and Lines of Code: Empirical Evidence of a Stable Linear Relationship

Researchers have often commented on the high correlation between McCabe’s Cyclomatic Complexity (CC) and lines of code (LOC). Many have believed this correlation high enough to justify adjusting CC by LOC or even substituting LOC for CC. However, from an empirical standpoint the relationship of CC to LOC is still an open one. We undertake the largest statistical study of this relationship to date. Employing modern regression techniques, we find the linearity of this relationship has been severely underestimated, so much so that CC can be said to have absolutely no explanatory power of its own. This research presents evidence that LOC and CC have a stable practically perfect linear relationship that holds across programmers, languages, code paradigms (procedural versus object-oriented), and software processes. Linear models are developed relating LOC and CC. These models are verified against over 1.2 million randomly selected source files from the SourceForge code repository. These files represent software projects from three target languages (C, C++, and Java) and a variety of programmer experience levels, software architectures, and development methodologies. The models developed are found to successfully predict roughly 90% of CC’s variance by LOC alone. This suggest not only that the linear relationship between LOC and CC is stable, but the aspects of code complexity that CC measures, such as the size of the test case space, grow linearly with source code size across languages and programming paradigms.

Software maintenance: a profile of past empirical research

The authors examine empirical software maintenance research reported from 1978 through 1987 and categorize the research according to placement, origin, and nature of research to determine what has been done in the past. A model of software maintenance is presented and used to derive classification characteristics. To aid in the investigation, an exhaustive electronic keyword search was made of abstracts found in Computer Database Abstracts and the INSPEC Computer and Control Abstracts. The full abstracts for the articles found in the searches were scrutinized by the researchers to determine whether they were appropriate. Based on this technique, summary and trend statistics are presented to characterize the state of empirical software maintenance research. Questions concerning the nature and future direction of software maintenance research are presented that aid in the process of internalizing the current state of empirical software maintenance research.<<ETX>>

The effect of human-computer interchange protocol on decision performance

Abstract:The concept of a collaborative human-computer interchange was proposed almost thirty years ago. The goal of this paradigm is to design human-computer decision-making systems that think and process information at a level exceeding that of either the human or the computer alone. Technological and conceptual developments have made this holistic partnership increasingly possible. Moreover, recent discussions of human-computer collaborative work have highlighted the system performance advantages of this interchange.In this paper, the notion of human-computer interchange protocols is developed and the importance of these protocols to human-computer collaboration and system performance is argued. Based on data collected in a laboratory setting, empirical support for the proposed holistic effect of human-computer interchange protocols on system performance is provided. Decision performance is significantly improved by interchange protocols that encourage human-computer interaction during the problem-solv...

A knowledge exchange architecture for collaborative human-computer communication

Based on accepted reference models of human and computer communication, a combined human-computer communication architecture is developed for exchanging knowledge. The architecture explicitly recognizes and prescribes a set of syntactic and semantic content functions needed to exchange knowledge for the achievement of collaborative problem solving. The functional components of this architecture are presented, and its potential for the development of more effective human-computer interaction is examined. >

Computer engineering, computer science and management information systems: partners in a unified software engineering curriculum

This paper describes the development of a new software engineering curriculum at the University of Alabama. This curriculum is jointly administered by three separate academic programs: computer engineering, computer science and management information systems. These programs have combined to develop a unified software engineering track, consisting of an optional sequence of courses for majors in the three programs. Our software engineering track is characterized by two key elements: the use of software component engineering as a technical foundation, and the integration of students from the three participating programs into a single capstone laboratory. The capstone laboratory involves the development of a multifaceted product, requiring the interdisciplinary cooperation of all three groups of students to complete. This paper describes the design and conceptual foundations of this program, which has received funding from the National Science Foundation.

Empirical software maintenance studies during the 1980s

The authors examine empirical software maintenance research during the 1980s and categorize the research according to placement, origin, and nature to determine what has been done in the past. To aid in the investigation, an exhaustive electronic keyword search was made of abstracts found in Computer Database Abstracts and the INSPEC Computer and Control; Abstracts. The full abstracts for the articles found in the searches were scrutinized to determine whether they were appropriate. On the basis of the abstracts, full articles were examined to provide summary and trend statistics. The dimensions used to categorize and interpret the current state of empirical software maintenance research were derived from a survey conducted at the 1988 IEEE Conference on Software Maintenance. It was found that the volume of empirical software maintenance research apparently has increased over the decade. Second, the use of COBOL in empirical studies appears to be increasing. The use of only students in empirical studies has declined slightly through the decade, and the majority of software maintenance research continues to be accomplished by academic researchers.<<ETX>>

Architectural requirements for integrating group decision support systems into the daily managerial experience

The authors develop system requirements for ongoing temporally and geographically distributed decision-making. They concentrate on the setting called the local area decision network (LADN), which is characterized as having geographically distributed decision group members working at their own convenience, using familiar support aids, and proceeding at their own pace. Specifically, the technical, decision modeling, and machine-induced group communication features are outlined.<<ETX>>

Information systems professionals: skills for th 1990s

Results are reported of a survey of 79 senior information systems managers in order to determine the skills needed by project managers, systems analysts/designers, and programmers in the 1990s. The respondents are senior information systems professionals representing 58 organizations of varying size in several different industries. Data were gathered via structured interviews and compared with similar data from 1978 and 1987. The results are used to examine the relative importance of the six skill requirement areas identified in the information systems curriculum recommended by the Association for Computing Machinery.<<ETX>>