Software Engineering for Technical Managers

This book comprises a set of papers presented at the 5th European Seminar on Industrial Software Technology, organized by the Technology Dissemination Committee of EWICS (the European Workshop on Industrial Computer Systems), covering software development, automated support, quality and legal issues for technology managers. Relevant issues in the technical area include the evaluation of new paradigms for system development and two that show particular promise are object-oriented design (including key concepts such as information hiding, inheritance and dynamic binding), and formal methods with their potential for benefits such as increased software reuse. At the same time, on the management side, more information is becoming available on issues such as productivity and quality and there is also a recognition that there is a need for automated technical support for both the technical and managerial aspects of projects. A particular issue tackled is that of software reuse and relevant questions are addressed - for example, how much does it cost to make a software component reuseable and how much can be saved by reusing it?
The paper on this issue suggests that part of the answer lies in the kind of components involved and a reasoned classification system with a set of results is offered here. Automated support is viewed from the project manager's position. An argument is made for the standpoint that project management tools are now powerful enough to allow managers to engage in "what if" explorations of project data to draw in new data upon which to base project management decisions. This theme is continued on the paper on SPADE - a toolset to support the formal development of software. Other papers take up the theme of toolsets at the earlier systems analysis stage, taking the functional model of a system as central to the approach. On configuration control, a review of the field is accompanied by a checklist of features that an automated project should have. The paper on quality argues that spending more on preventing low quality should yield returns that outweigh the increased spending. The theory of metrics is laid out with the intention of enabling the reader to be in a better position to evaluate one system of metrics against another.
The book closes with a paper on the protection of computer systems and software. The author points out that legal anomalies exist amongst different countries, but that there are common problems for all suppliers and consumers of software. He examines copyright law, including the matter of who owns a program copyright. Other legal matters such as source code deposit schemes, restrictive covenants, employee contracts and statutory provisions applying to the supply of software systems are investigated.