University of Southern California
Center for Systems and Software Engineering
Integrating Systems and Software
Engineering:
Complex Systems Workshop
29 October 2007
University of Southern California
Center for Systems and Software Engineering
IS&SE Workshop Objectives: Identify
• Biggest issues and opportunities?
– In technology
– In management
– In complex systems
• Inhibitors to progress and how to overcome them?
• Ability of six principles to improve IS&SE?
• Ability of Incremental Commitment Model to
improve IS&SE?
• What else is needed?
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Technology/management research
Education and training
Regulations, specifications and standards
Other?
October 2007
©USC-CSSE
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University of Southern California
Center for Systems and Software Engineering
Attendees
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John Rieff
Tom Schroeder
Kirstie Bellman
Bruce Amato
Bruce Kassan
Barry Boehm
October 2007
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©USC-CSSE
Lee Whitt
Darrell Maxwell
Steven Wong
Ali Nikolai
Cynthia Nikoai
Jo Ann Lane
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University of Southern California
Center for Systems and Software Engineering
The Need for Three Different
Conversations
1. What does SE mean for large, complex softwareintensive systems
2. What does SE/SWE integration mean when adding
embedded systems, devices, hardware, networks
3. How are we going to deal with SE/SWE of more
complex emergent systems of the future (later )
October 2007
©USC-CSSE
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University of Southern California
Center for Systems and Software Engineering
Biggest Issues
• Lack of understanding by SE that SW provides enabling
technology for system integration
• SE needs to take broader role, stay involved across life-cycle
• Key hard architecture problems require integrated SE/SWE
approach
– Ex. multi-level security issues (access rights); protection;
resilience; non-functional requirements; quality attributes
• Shared ownership of problems between SWE/SE
• Architecture team needs to combine both SWE and SE
background
– How to support technically, managerially?
In no specific order….
October 2007
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University of Southern California
Center for Systems and Software Engineering
Fostering Shareable Viewpoints
• Sharable representation and language between SE and SWE
(shared models/artifacts, not just data dictionaries or
boundary objects)
• No guidance, process requirements for integrating
systems and software workflows
• Capture lessons-learned to avoid mistakes, repeat
successes (specific examples TBS)
• Development as collaboration among system elements, not
traditional decomposition into functions
• Need better methods to support the explicit tradeoffs among
different partitioning of the system and different levels of
resolution in order to support better reconciliation among
SE/SWE
In no specific order….
October 2007
©USC-CSSE
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University of Southern California
Center for Systems and Software Engineering
Incremental / Iterative Approach is
Critical to SE/SWE Integration
• Provide SE opportunity to experiment (and to fail),
in order to understand feasibility
• “Incremental/iterative” processes provide more
frequent opportunities for SE / SWE touch-points
– How to implement in large-scale systems?
• Systems / HW / SW engineers must employ
iterative methods (bunch of little V’s)
In no specific order….
October 2007
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University of Southern California
Center for Systems and Software Engineering
IS&SE for Complex Systems: General Issues
• SE should adopt more modern develop paradigms
• Commercial ROI vs DoD business model
– Different incentives
– Contractual / acquisition methods
– Resulting in difficulty in adopting commercial practices
for DoD systems
• Key role: “software system engineer” specialty to bridge
gap?
• SWE/SE misunderstand respective roles and impacts of key
decisions—Teams need to focus on
– SE is more than defining Interfaces to appropriate levels
of detail
– Mission, orchestrating for global behaviors
– Scalability
In no specific order….
October 2007
©USC-CSSE
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University of Southern California
Center for Systems and Software Engineering
IS&SE for Complex Systems: Summary
• Many key issues and opportunities discussed for
current systems of today
– Often based on example failures and successes
• Concerns: Are fixes for systems of today going to
be obsolete for systems of tomorrow?
• Future efforts
– Develop paper describing issues and opportunities in
more detail
– Follow-on workshops to develop opportunities further
October 2007
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