A large DoD weapons systems project had a need for a Chief Software Engineer at the program office to oversee and manage the software development effort of several contractors. The program office asked Al Florence to construct a list of the required experience and skills that this Chief Engineer should have and to support the selection.

This position is critical to the success of the weapons systems' mission. Software is key in this success, if software does not work, the mission fails. Software is an area that traditionally has not received the attention that it deserves. In order for software to meets mission requirements it needs to be of high quality and maintainable, developed within cost and schedule, and managed at the highest professional and technical levels. The project office Software Chief Engineer responsible for this has to have the appropriate education, experience and skills at the highest possible levels.

Proper Specification of Software Requirements: Some of the biggest challenges faced by software engineers are those of requirement definition, analysis, validation, and specification. In most cases they are ambiguous and inconsistent. You may have the best of everything: best management, technical staff, resources, budget, schedule, customer, and even Capability Maturity Model Integration CMMI®) Level 5 processes. But, if you do not have a good set of well-defined requirements that are understood and agreed to by all stakeholders, you are at grave risk.

While re-developing legacy systems, a Government agency reverse engineered the existing software requirements. Al Florence was assigned as a consultant to guide the teams in the proper specification of requirements. He analyzed and validated the requirements against the following critical attributes: completeness, clarity, traceability, testability, consistency, unique identification, design free, and use of the word "shall". Examples will show some of the requirements as initially specified by the Government, followed by this author's critique of the requirements against the critical attributes, and finally their re-specification.

Mr. Florence, at major technology firms (currently at The MITRE Corporation), has been involved in all phases of the life cycle in engineering and management on diversified projects: spacecraft; aircraft; missiles, weapon systems; particle accelerators and information systems. He has developed processes for all CMM® Key Process Areas at all levels through Level 5 and is currently involved with CMMI® Process Areas. He is a frequent conference presenter and has many technical publications. Mr. Florence holds a BS degree from the University of New Mexico in mathematics and physics and has done graduate work in computer science at the University of California in Los Angles and University of Southern California.

• BRIEF-0028_SE_Revitalization-SPIN_022707.ppt (7.678 MB)

This presentation will present the frequent and typical problems which are caused by absent, incomplete, or inadequate use of quality assurance (QA) and configuration management (CM) disciplines, processes, and procedures. Some key examples of project product-quality and schedule-risk issues related to such QA and CM practices will be described. Preventive and corrective measures found to be effective in some organizations will be shown and critiqued. The presenter will solicit audience participation for identification of "most annoying" issues and most frustrating obstacles in the way of solutions. The presentation will conclude with a brief summary of the CMMI approach to the QA and CM disciplines, to show how this framework offers valuable guidance.

Jonathan D. Addelston has been the IV&V Team Lead at the DoD Defense Business Transformation that is developing an extensive Business Enterprise Architecture (BEA) since June 2004 in the new DoD Business Transformation Agency. He started UpStart Systems as a systems and software engineering consulting practice in 1996, focusing on enterprise architecture, process improvement, business process re-engineering, process management, and independent verification and validation. He was the CTO at BDM International (1995-96), the Vice President for Software Engineering at PRC, Inc. (1989-95), and a founding Vice President at the Software Productivity Consortium (1986-89). He graduated from MIT in 1965 (before it had an undergraduate computer science major). He is the co-founder and program chair of the first chapter of the Software Process Improvement Network (in Washington DC).

• BRIEF-0028_SE_Revitalization-SPIN_022707.ppt (7.678 MB)