This paper reports on experiences of an inter-disciplinary project involving software engineers and sociologists. The project is concerned with discovering the requirements for a user interface to a flight database which is used to provide real-time information to air traffic controllers. The sociologists are conducting an ethnographic analysis of the activity of air traffic control and this is being used to inform the development of a prototype system. The paper gives an overview of the project, discusses how sociologists can contribute to requirements engineering and suggests tool support which will allow ethnographic observations to be integrated into the requirements engineering process. Understanding work through ethnography Ethnography is a process which was originally developed by anthropologists to understand social mechanisms in `primitive' societies. It involves an anthropologist spending an extended period of time (sometimes several years) living in a society and making deta...

This paper describes current work on the application of visual techniques to the design and construction ofparallel ana’distn’butedprograms. In particular, we look at how the sofhvare architectural view can be effectively utilised to provide a common framework for integrating the various sofhoare development activities, ranging from early, informal program design to the evolution of the running program. A prototype visual programming environment- the Software Architect’s Assistant- has been built for the design and development of Regis distributed programs. It provides the user with automated, intelligent assistance throughout the software design process. Facilities provided include the display of integrated graphical and textual views, a flexible mechanism for recording design information and the automatic generation of program code and formatted reports from design diagrams. Software reuse is also supported through the use of component libraries. Support for graphical monitoring and management of running programs, currently provided by a complementary tool, will be integrated into the environment to provide a complete solution for visual distributed programming. 1

The Tracker project is studying rework in systems engineering projects. Our hypothesis is that providing decision makers with information about previous relevant decisions will assist in reducing the amount of rework in a project. We propose an architecture for the flexible integration of the tools implementing the variety of theories and models used in the project. The techniques include ethnographic analysis, natural language processing, activity theory, norm analysis, and speech and handwriting recognition. In this paper, we focus on the natural language processing components, and describe experiments which demonstrate the feasibility of our text mining approach.

This paper addresses the problem of `production-quality' CSCW software development where software is developed from an agreed statement of the system requirements. In particular, we are concerned with ways in which requirements specifications for CSCW systems can be developed and with the integration of ethnography into traditional specification methods. Existing approaches to requirements engineering are briefly described as are our experiences of using ethnographic studies in systems requirements analysis. We suggest that existing requirements analysis methods and ethnography must both evolve to accommodate the strengths of the other approach to produce an effective and complete method of deriving cooperative system requirements. An investigation of the changes required to notations for system description and analysis methods is a longterm research goal. However, we suggest shorter-term results can be obtained by using integrated tools for ethnography and requirements capture. Introd...

Most software reuse research has ignored the role of the software engineer. However, software engineers tend to be better reasoners and have more experiences to recall than tool-based reuse mechanisms. This paper argues for integrating software engineers into existing reuse paradigms and providing tool support to assist problem description and component understanding, selection and adaptation. However, empirical studies indicate that these reuse tasks are difficult, even for experienced software engineers. Therefore, guidelines and a high-level architecture for design of tool support are based on reports of behaviour and problems arising during reuse. 1: Introduction Many technical solutions to software reuse problems have failed to result in widespread reuse. One reason may be that these solutions ignore human involvement. This paper investigates specific problems which arise from excluding software developers from the reuse process and proposes solutions based on human involvement fo...

. In this paper, a system for capturing and maintaining design rationale is described. The significant contribution of this work is to address the problem of ensuring that the model is followed by the user and to extend the model to include risk analysis. This is accomplished using a software tool (PPIS) that allows the structure of the argumentation process to be made explicit and visible in the system. 1. Introduction The systems design process usually involves creating and evaluating a number of possible designs. The design team discusses the advantages and disadvantages of each of these. The design finally accepted may be the most appropriate technically but, more often than not, other factors such as the need for compatibility with other systems, the need to use company standards, the need to minimise risks in other parts of the system govern the ultimate design choice. The reasons why design choices were made are usually lost as the design team disperses to other projects. The de...

The Software Architect's Assistant is a visual programming environment for the design and development of Regis distributed programs. It provides the user with automated, intelligent assistance throughout the software design process. Facilities provided include the display of integrated graphical and textual views, a flexible mechanism for recording design information and the automatic generation of program code and formatted reports from design diagrams. Software reuse is also supported through the use of component libraries. The main focus of the Assistant is on the application of visual techniques to the design and construction of parallel and distributed programs. Particular emphasis is placed on utilising the software architectural view as a framework for integrating the various software development activities, ranging from early, informal program design to the evolution of the running program. Support for graphical monitoring and management of running programs, currently provided ...

The Software Architect's Assistant is a visual programming environment for the design and development of Regis distributed programs. It provides the user with automated, intelligent assistance throughout the software design process. Facilities provided include the display of integrated graphical and textual views, a flexible mechanism for recording design information and the automatic generation of program code and formatted reports from design diagrams. Software reuse is also supported through the use of component libraries. The main focus of the Assistant is on the application of visual techniques to the design and construction of parallel and distributed programs. Particular emphasis is placed on utilising the software architectural view as a framework for integrating the various software development activities, ranging from early, informal program design to the evolution of the running program. Support for graphical monitoring and management of running programs, currently provided ...