An Analysis of Process Characteristics for Developing Scientific Software

2011 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 64-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diane Kelly

The development of scientific software is usually carried out by a scientist who has little professional training as a software developer. Concerns exist that such development produces low-quality products, leading to low-quality science. These concerns have led to recommendations and the imposition of software engineering development processes and standards on the scientists. This paper utilizes different frameworks to investigate and map characteristics of the scientific software development environment to the assumptions made in plan-driven software development methods and agile software development methods. This mapping exposes a mismatch between the needs and goals of scientific software development and the assumptions and goals of well-known software engineering development processes.

Author(s):  
Diane Kelly

The development of scientific software is usually carried out by a scientist who has little professional training as a software developer. Concerns exist that such development produces low-quality products, leading to low-quality science. These concerns have led to recommendations and the imposition of software engineering development processes and standards on the scientists. This paper utilizes different frameworks to investigate and map characteristics of the scientific software development environment to the assumptions made in plan-driven software development methods and agile software development methods. This mapping exposes a mismatch between the needs and goals of scientific software development and the assumptions and goals of well-known software engineering development processes.


Author(s):  
Capers Jones

The software engineering field has been a fountain of innovation. Ideas and inventions from the software domain have literally changed the world as we know it. For software development, we have a few proven innovations. The way software is built remains surprisingly primitive. Even in 2008 major software applications are cancelled, overrun their budgets and schedules, and often have hazardously bad quality levels when released. There have been many attempts to improve software development, but progress has resembled a drunkard’s walk. Some attempts have been beneficial, but others have been either ineffective or harmful. This article puts forth the hypothesis that the main reason for the shortage of positive innovation in software development methods is due to a lack of understanding of the underlying problems of the software development domain. A corollary hypothesis is that lack of understanding of the problems is due to inadequate measurement of quality, productivity, costs, and the factors that affect project outcomes.


Author(s):  
Anuradha Chaminda Gajanayaka

Agile software development has established as a reliable alternative to waterfall software development model. Unfortunately the use of agile software development has been limited to time based contracts and not for time limited contracts. The main reason for this limitation is the “Agile manifesto” itself. The forth value of the manifesto states that agile believers find more value in “Responding to change over following a plan”. This is the one of the main reasons why agile software development methods are not preferred for a fixed priced contract or time limited contract. The following case study provides an example on how the agile software development can be used for fixed priced software development contracts even when operating in offshore context. The agile software development concepts were used throughout to plan, execute, monitor, report, etc. for the project documented in this case study.


Author(s):  
M. Siponen ◽  
R. Baskerville ◽  
R. Kuivalainen

Software developers can use agile software development methods to build secure information systems. Current agile methods have few (if any) explicit security fea-tures. While several discrete security methods (such as checklists and management standards) can supplement agile methods, few of these integrate seamlessly into other software development methods. Because of the severe constraints imposed by agile methods, these discrete security techniques integrate very poorly into agile approaches. This chapter demonstrates how the security features can be integrated into an agile method called feature driven development.


Author(s):  
M. Siponen ◽  
R. Baskerville ◽  
T. Kuivalainen

Software developers can use agile software development methods to build secure information systems. Current agile methods have few (if any) explicit security fea-tures. While several discrete security methods (such as checklists and management standards) can supplement agile methods, few of these integrate seamlessly into other software development methods. Because of the severe constraints imposed by agile methods, these discrete security techniques integrate very poorly into agile approaches. This chapter demonstrates how the security features can be integrated into an agile method called feature driven development.


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