Friday, December 6, 2002

Meeting Topic:

OVERCOMING AVERSION TO SOFTWARE PROCESS THROUGH CONTROLLED FAILURE

Presenter: David Klappholz

Abstract

Dr. Klappholz will present a method, "Live-Thru Case Histories" for motivating people to recognize the necessity of software engineering "best practices". This method 'shocks' people into the realization that without learning from and implementing best practices, their software development efforts are likely to fail.

He has tested the Live-Thru method in two year-long senior courses at Stevens and is forming a consortium of universities to test it further. The method is useful for training new hires as well as more experienced software developers.

Dr. Klappholz has developed a questionnaire for measuring attitude toward software engineering (ATSE) to assess the efficacy of the Live-Thru method. He has calibrated the questionnaire at a number of SPIN meetings as well as at the DoD's Software Technology Conference 2002. We will take the ATSE and discuss its content as well as attitudes toward software best practices and effecting change.

Meeting Coordinator: George Huling - g.huling@alumni.duke.edu

Your Presenter: David Klappholz studied mathematics and linguistics at MIT. He worked in the fields of natural language understanding and automata theory for the MSEE and PhD in Computer and Information Science at the University of Pennsylvania. He has taught at Columbia University, Brooklyn Polytechnic, and Stevens Institute of Technology, where he supervised technology research funded by IBM Research, DoE, NSF, and others. His most recent technology research has been in the fields of parallel computer architecture and programming languages and in the automatic "parallelization" of sequential code. He has recently experienced a profound conversion from process-averse technologist to software engineer. His current research interest is in developing novel techniques for motivating and teaching software process.

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MANY THANKS TO THE GENEROUS SUPPORT OF OUR SPIN CO-SPONSORS:
NORTHROP GRUMMAN, RAYTHEON, TRW