Hauptseminar für Überfachliche Grundlagen Design Rationale

Prof. Bernd Bruegge, Ph.D.
Allen Dutoit, Ph.D.

Registration

To register for this seminar, send mail to Allen Dutoit with a topic from the list below no later than July 7, 2003. Topics are awarded on a first come, first serve basis.

Intended Audience

Students with a Vordiplom and some system experience (e.g., a Software Engineering Praktikum).

Content

Motivation. The primary goal of a software development project is to build and deliver a software product with its accompanying support material (requirements specification, design documentation, test cases, and test results). Much of the focus is spent on the system under construction:

• What should it do (requirements)?
• How should it do it (system and detailed design)?
• Does the system under construction meet its requirements (testing)?
• Do the intended users find is usable (usability testing)?

Currently, little effort during development is spent describing the why of the system. For example:

• Why certain feature is included in the system?
• Why was a certain component selected?
• Why was a certain programming language chosen?

Unfortunately, this decision making information, called the design rationale of the system, is often lost when the project is completed. The focus of design rationale research is to find cost effective methods and tools for capturing, structuring, and accessing design rationale information.

Goal. The goal of this seminar is to survey current research, encourage critical thinking from its participants, and generate new ideas for design rationale. Each week, one or two participants will prepare an hour long presentation from a list of selected topics (see table below). The presenter will:

• summarize the topic,
• explain its significance in relation to similar work,
• evaluate the author's approach and results, and
• conclude with a list of issues that have been left open by the author.

The presentation will be followed by an active discussion conducted by the other participants.

Rationale Exercise. In parallel to the presentation cycle, the seminar participants will conduct a 2-3 session exercise on design rationale, making changes to an existing specification for a meeting scheduler system. Unlike typical specification exercises, the specification you are changing includes rationale provided by the original developers. You will use the rationale attached to the specification and provide additionale rationale knowledge for justifying the decisions you make. The goal of the exercise is to emphasize the importance (and complexity) of rationale during specific phases of software engineering.

Topics

Date	Presenter	Paper	Slides
28.10.2003	Allen Dutoit	Preparation Meeting Bibliographical Research
11.11.2003	Available	Conklin & Begeman. gIBIS: A Hypertext Tool for Exploratory Policy Discussion
25.11.2003	Iulia Alexandrescu	Bratthall, Johansson, Regnell. Is A Design Rationale Vital When Predicting Change Impact?	pdf
2.12.2003		No seminar
9.12.2003	Andreas Vogl	Dellen, Kohler, & Maurer. Integrating Software Process Models and Design Rationales
16.12.2003		No seminar
13.1.2004	Available	J. Lonchamp. A Generic Computer Support for Concurrent Design
20.1.2004	Constantin Mitran	Herbsleb & Kuwana. Preserving Knowledge in Design Projects: What Designers Need to Know
27.1.2004	Available	Mark Klein. Capturing Design Rationale in Concurrent Engineering Teams
3.2.2004	Lilith Al-Jadiri	Conklin, Selvin, Buckingham Shum, Sierhuis. Facilitated Hypertext for Collective Sensemaking: 15 Years on from gIBIS
10.2.2004	Allen Dutoit	Rationale Exercise 2

Time and Location

Room 01.07.058 (Lehrstuhl Bruegge Besprechungsraum, see directions) Tuesdays, 14:00-15:30 (s.t.)
Preparation meeting on October 28, 2003.
First student presentation on November 11, 2003.

Requirements

• High motivation for the topic
• A presentation of about 45 minutes
• Independent literature research
• Attendence to all presentations and active discussion in the seminar
• Attendence to the rationale exercise

Notes

• This seminar is conducted in English
• This seminar is a "Überfachliches Grundlagenseminar".

Useful links

• Tips for the presentation
  • How to Present a Paper in Theoretical Computer Science: A Speaker's Guide for Students
• Literature search
  • Citeseer (free access)
  • ACM Digital Library (access from TUM)

Supervisor

Allen Dutoit
Room 01.07.053
Office hours: by appointment