Feedback, evolution and software technology

A 1968 study of the software process led, inter alia, to the observation that the software process constitutes a feedback system. Attempts at its management and improvement must take this basic fact into consideration if optimum results are to be obtained. A project, FEAST/1, was initiated in 1996 to examine the assertion. Its objective is to identify feedback mechanisms and controls in the software evolution processes of several industrial collaborators, assess their impact and examine their role and potential in process improvement. The approach being used in the study is to construct black box, white box (System Dynamics) and other classes of process models of selected collaborator systems on the basis of the available process evolution metrics and other global data about process components and structures. The feedback that exists in these processes involves many humans in many roles. These observe, interpret, communicate, listen and act (or not). Global models of their activities ...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1996
• Where: ISPW
• Authors: M. M. Lehman
• Keywords: Feedback, ISPW 1996, Process Models, Software Engineering, Software Process