SURF

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SURF
IFIP 98 - ISCurrent Issues and Future
Changes Helsinki, Finland, December 10-13, 1998

• Achieving Quality through software reuse

A Process Improvement Experiment in IBM
Italy Funded by the European Commission within
the European Systems and Software Initiative
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Experiment Scenario
OUR CHALLENGES
MAISD 70 people
Software 15 people
OUR PRODUCTS
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Objectives
Quality (Process and Product) is a strategic key
to

• Increase Productivity - Reduce Time To
  Market - Reduce Maintenance Efforts

• Increase Flexibility - Manage peaks of
  activity - Catch Business Opportunities

A reuse-oriented approachis the baseline for
this experiment
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Road map
Constraints - Few domain-based reuse
opportunities - Need for geographically
distributed development capabilities -
Component-based reuse alone is not enough
Basic Assumptions - Holistic Approach -
Gradual introduction of changes - Selected
Tools (CMS, Repository, Metrics)
Experiment Steps - Define Metrics (at
Process and Product level) - Adapt the
process (improve IPD and get ISO9000 certif.)
- Adapt the Product Architecture
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Fade to Grey
Java
APPLICATIONS LAYER (RAD)
VCC Vbas
Java C
A software architecturebased on a layered
structure designed to decrease complexity andto
enable reuse at different levels of detail
COMPONENTS LAYER (building blocks)
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Strategic Changes
Developers roles - Specific skills
enhancement (ASM,C,OO,RAD) - for and
with reuse by layer

• Documentation
• UML as description language
• HTML as base format
• Describes layers interfaces

Product Metrics support Reusability metrics based
on FCM Integrated in the documentation
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Main Achievements
Conventional metrics show a general improvement...
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Main Achievements (continued)
But a deeper analysis shows new opportunities...
A great reduction of the applications
complexity(from out of control to well
understood)
A great (human) resource interchange
ability(from very critical to quite easy)
A great improvement in documentation(from free
to structured and standardised)
A great capability to retarget applications by
reusing(from not possible to one-day
solutions)
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Key Lessons
Quality improvement needs a sound cultural
background in OO and SE principles.
Dont underestimate the human factor strong
commitment and attitude to teamwork are
fundamental.
Reuse metrics are very critical try to simplify
and make an endless tuning on your metric system.
Tools (repository, metrics, case, etc) are
fundamental, but are not free and must be
continuously maintained
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Future Actions
Software Quality improvement is an endless process
Next steps will be
Better Integration between CMS, Repository and
Metrics
Improvement of SW documentation management by
mean of a WMS (Workflow Management System)
Continuous improvement of the layered architecture
Continuous tuning of the Product metrics system
Improvement of the Process metrics system