Dick B. Simmons

Communications: a software group productivity dominator

Software group productivity can be dominated by many factors. A dominator is a single factor that causes productivity to decline ten-fold. The software productivity dominators discussed are design partition and communications. A model is developed to show the effect of intra-group communications on software group productivity, efficiency and group productivity speed up.

A win-win metric based software management approach

Managers have difficulty understanding and visualizing software systems. A metric-based management approach is introduced that helps managers plan, schedule and staff software system development. A knowledge-based system is described that helps managers measure and visualize software systems. Once managers are able to understand and visualize software systems, they can control software development. >

Knowledge conceptualization tool

Knowledge acquisition is one of the most important and problematic aspects of developing knowledge-based systems. Many automated tools have been introduced in the past, however, manual techniques are still heavily used. Interviewing is one of the most commonly used manual techniques for a knowledge acquisition process, and few automated support tools exist to help knowledge engineers enhance their performance. The paper presents a knowledge conceptualization tool (KCT) in which the knowledge engineer can effectively retrieve, structure, and formalize knowledge components, so that the resulting knowledge base is accurate and complete. The KCT uses information retrieval technique to facilitate conceptualization, which is one of the human intensive activities of knowledge acquisition. Two information retrieval techniques employing best-match strategies are used: vector space model and probabilistic ranking principle model. A prototype of the KCT was implemented to demonstrate the concept. The results from KCT are compared with the outputs from a manual knowledge acquisition process in terms of amount of information retrieved and the process time spent. An analysis of the results shows that the process time to retrieve knowledge components (e.g., facts, rules, protocols, and uncertainty) of KCT is about half that of the manual process, and the number of knowledge components retrieved from knowledge acquisition activities is four times more than that retrieved through a manual process.

Manager Associate (IKBS)

The knowledge-based Manager Associate, which assists managers in planning, organizing, staffing, scheduling, measuring, visualizing, and controlling software development processes, is described. The Manager Associate operates in a distributed Unix environment in which the manager has access to the software developer workstations through a computer network. The Manager Associate helps managers anticipate problems, which allow early corrective action. As a result, software projects can be developed on time, within budget, and to customer satisfaction. >

Software Project Planning Associate (SPPA): a knowledge-based approach for dynamic software project planning and tracking

Software project planning can be one of the most critical activities in the modern software development process. Without a realistic and objective software project plan, the software development process cannot be managed in an effective way. Over-runs of 100-200% are common. Some software projects never deliver anything. Managers have difficulty understanding and visualizing the software development process defined in a software project plan. The Software Project Planning Associate (SPPA), developed in the Java programming language, is accessed through standard World Wide Web browsers and designed to assist a software project manager in objectively initializing a software project plan, refining/improving a plan, organizing, staffing, scheduling, measuring, visualizing, controlling, tracking, predicting and data collecting. The resources, tasks, schedules and milestones of the software project are described in the plan. As software development process evolves, measurements are unobtrusively gathered and compliance to the software project plan is reported. Software process effectiveness predictions are made and recommendations are dynamically reported suggesting the software development that should be executed to best comply with the software project plan. The SPPA was developed according to a knowledge-base plan model to allow the manager to keep track of the software plan component. SPPA, with the assistance of a software project planning agent, reports problems and suggests problem solutions to the manager. SPPA helps managers assure that a project is within budget, on time and to customer satisfaction.

Predicting programming group productivity a communications model

Methods of studying programmer productivity are difficult to find. The classical methods of observation and statistical analysis are in many cases inappropriate. This paper describes a simulation approach in which programmers are considered to be individual processors. Relative group productivity is then measured based upon the productivity levels and communications relationships of the processors.

Expert system building tools

An overview is presented of features in several expert system building tools, and the mechanical properties of knowledge representation in these tools are described. A knowledge canonical form based on knowledge representation schemes found in commercial expert system building tools is then described. The knowledge canonical form can be used for knowledge base translation, cooperation between expert systems, and reuse of expert systems. A number of complex expert systems built from simpler loosely coupled systems are then described.<<ETX>>

Taking the measure of program complexity

Program complexity is a topic often discussed in the literature. Research is ongoing in verifying existing complexity measures. There is also a continuing effort to produce and validate new approaches to a complexity measure which incorporate ideas from a variety of areas. Too often, however, approaches to complexity measurement center on a particular aspect of a program, e.g., structures, without incorporating other relevant program characteristics. The question to be answered, then, is, What aspects of a program contribute to its complexity? This paper presents a first step in answering this question. Preliminary results are presented from a Delphi Survey on program complexity. The survey was sent to a cross-section of programmers, managers and software experts. Respondents rated a large number of characteristics as to their effect on program complexity. The paper summarizes the results and includes preliminary analyses.

Measuring and tracking distributed software development projects

Visualizing a distributed software development project is difficult. We have been experimenting with creating Intelligent Agent (IA) tools to assist project administrators in managing and controlling large distributed software development projects. A PAMPA 2 Knowledge Base is created by gathering information from project CASE tools supplied by an), vendor. While the IA tools are independent of a specific vendors CASE tools, we have built a prototype based on Rational Corporation and Microsoft Corporation tools. A number of IAs have been developed to work with the PAMPA 2 Knowledge Base. An IA is described that tracks cost driver dominators to determine if a project may fail and tells managers how to modify project plans to reduce probability of project failure. An Internet based prototype of the PAMPA Knowledge Base and associated IAs has been developed.

Fuzzy approach to document recognition

The authors present a new approach to document recognition using fuzzy rules. The system uses information such as relative locations, relative sizes, and positions. A prototype DOCREC-III is described, which takes bitmap scanned images as input and uses spatial knowledge (layout structure) to reason about the rectangular segments (logical structure) in technical papers. The system provides a compact rule base with accuracy and efficiency. The rules are concise but powerful enough to recognize a variety of layout structures observed in technical papers.<<ETX>>