James D. Palmer

The IEEE Systems. Man, and Cybernetics Society: past, present, and future

Four current and former IEEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (SMC) Society presidents consider the past, present, and future of the IEEE SMC Society to commemorate the societys 20th anniversary. The authors address its auspicious beginning, its transition from an incubatee to an incubator society, the breadth of its transactions, the international character of its membership, the appropriateness of the name, the move toward a systems-oriented umbrella organization, the evolving array of research areas, and the challenges and opportunities the society faces in the future. >

Multigroup decision-support systems in CSCW

Research in computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) has concentrated on developing techniques and support systems for groups of tightly coupled individuals focused on activities such as group writing and design development. A natural extension involves group decision-support systems (GDSS) that can assist multiple groups working in different places at different times. Our work extends the GDSS approach to a multigroup decision-support system (MGDSS) and uses the advanced integrated requirements engineering system (AIRES) for support. Two case studies, including data from user questionnaires, indicate a high level of user satisfaction with the support the system provides. The MGDSS process and AIRES software support idea elicitation to solve complex problems. The system automatically organizes and assesses these ideas to help large groups build consensus.<<ETX>>

Systems Engineering for Software Productivity

The crisis in software productivity is well documented. Fundamentally, it has occurred as a consequence of the rising demand for enhanced capabilities through information technology. This results in the need for new and larger software systems and significant advances in hardware. Software engineering generally has given attention to the development of microlevel tools to address the growing needs to increase software productivity. A systems engineering approach to increasing software productivity is outlined. The need is cited for knowledge support systems used in conjunction with various library modules containing access to microenhancement tools: high level languages, very high level languages, compilers and automatic program generators, and macroenhancement tools. The need for macroproductivity tools such as rapid prototyping, reusability constructs, and an interactive support system environment that involves the systems engineer, the user, and the software engineer are discussed. A study of microenhancement approaches for the various phases of a typical life cycle for software acquisition is given. The most widely used microen-hancement approaches are also documented and, through this typical software acquisition cycle, the need for a taxonomy of methods to make productivity tools generally available and subject to greater use is established. This is followed by a discussion of macroenhancement approaches to software productivity.

A pattern matching and clustering based approach for supporting requirements transformation

One problem in requirements transformation from informal prose requirements to formal specifications is natural language processing. Although natural language understanding is still not practical for general requirements processing, syntactical information is useful for concept extraction. This paper discusses the correspondence between requirements sentence structure patterns and the events/transition concepts. It addresses how this correspondence might be utilized to extract events and transitions from conditional sentences. A pattern matching and clustering based approach is proposed to support event and transition extraction. The approach first selects requirements that are likely to contain event/transition information and then groups similar requirements to extract events. Once events are identified, the original requirements are clustered based on events to identify, related transition information. The approach is simple and does not require a parser.<<ETX>>

A multimedia computer supported cooperative work environment for requirements engineering

The authors describe the architecture and the main features of a multimedia computer supported cooperative work environment (MCSCWE) and its application in requirements engineering. The MCSCWE has been utilized in several requirements engineering activities, and the use of the MCSCWE in a case study conducted for the Sacramento Area Council of Governments (SACOG) is presented. For the SACOG case study, 85 participants were convened by SACOG and divided into seven spatially distributed groups working on the same problem sets, i.e., the problem of coming up with a strategic plan to reduce congestion and meet clean air requirements as required by Federal law. The results of the case study demonstrate that the MCSCWE was effective and efficient in assisting this group to come to consensus on the issues and strategies necessary to achieve these goals.<<ETX>>

National Goal Formation in a Time of Transition

Discontinuous change of institutions, values, concepts, etc. is the characteristic of the world today. In the face of this discontinuous change the methods of goal setting remain essentially unchanged in the traditional steady-state mold. In times of transition such as now we must be able to learn how to handle large quantities of unstructured and unfamiliar information, often qualitative in nature, which exceeds the capacity of the unaided human mind. The hallmark of our present society is the success of science and technology in meeting our dated social goal. This, in turn, has caused the absolute need for reexamination of the values and goals in relationship to science and technology. Yet, no new guide for this reexamination has yet been proposed. What we offer here is a viable alternative to steady-state resolutions?transition management. This approach to resolving the issues of value differences in times of discontinuous change is based on the premise that solutions to problems during transition can be attained effectively only if value differences are made explicit. The major elements in the management of discontinuous change require skills in supportive confrontation and conceptual mapping. These skills lead to making values explicit and then to the development of new insights and value relationships. This leads to the cognitive reformation of previously held value patterns and to emergent solutions to otherwise insoluble conflicts.

Information Systems and Decision Processes in Higher Education

Increasing demands are being made on higher education by faculty, students, and state and federal governments in a time of diminishing resources and increasing complexities. The internal needs of management and the external requirements of a multitude of constituencies demonstrate the need for data that are not only accurate and relevant but also timely. One institutions approach to decisionmaking and to the use of the computer in the very human enterprise of education are given. Various complexities¿such as shifting student interests, increasing legislative demands, and intensifying management concerns¿are examined as they impact decisionmaking and create greater demands on decisionmakers. Examples include an intent structure for information needs, the impact of an enrollment shortfall, and the structure of a resource-allocation model.

A Feature-Based Reuse Library

Software reuse is widely recognized as a solution to improving software productivity, quality and reliability. While there have been high expectations for the benefit of software reuse, the actual gain has been relatively small. One of the problems is that code components are typically developed with an application-orientation without consideration of reuse. As a result, they are generally difficult to identify for reuse even though they are quite reusable. One approach to this problem is to search for code component based on software system features where features are a composite set of predefined facet attributes. To support feature-based reuse, a feature-based reuse library (FRL) is proposed.

Use of multimedia to augment simulation

The authors describes efforts to integrate multimedia and simulation, the general domain of interest being regional mobility. Multimedia have been used to augment simulation of highway maintenance, interactive sessions of a transportation management association (TMA), traffic mobility in a highly congested area, and traffic signage. Results thus far show that one of the more important aspects for successful application of multimedia techniques is a graphical user interface. It is a difficult task to prevent information overload; however, the graphical user interface permits management of information transfer rates and presentation dynamics while reducing the potential impact of information overload. Other results indicate the value added from proper useage of audio, video, text, and graphics, and various combinations of these to augment ease of understanding of simulation model presentations.<<ETX>>

Real-time data transfer in an intelligent CIM node

A major step toward resolution of two of the major problems in CIM applications, real-time data transfer and uncertain information, is presented. The approach to real-time data transfer, including handling of asynchronous priority interrupts, is accomplished by introduction of an intelligent interface node connected to the primary data communications channel or information systems backbone. A secondary communications channel is developed for this purpose. In simulation runs, the intelligent interface node was able to satisfy 99.1% of the real-time data transfer resource shortfalls that otherwise would have resulted without implementation of the knowledge-based expert system, including all of the highest-priority data transfers. Resolution of uncertain information is accomplished by use of the MYCIN shell, modified for the specific purposes of CIM implementation.<<ETX>>