Software forms around a requirement. Defining this requirement is often regarded as the hardest part of software engineering. The requirement however has an additional complexity as, once defined, it will change with time. This change of requirement can come either from the user, or from the rapid advances in 'computer' technology. How then can software succeed to continue to remain 'current' both in terms of requirements and technology in this forever changing environment? This thesis examines the issues surrounding 'change' as applied to software and software engineering. Changing requirements are often deemed a 'curse' placed upon software engineers. It has been suggested, however, that the problems associated with change exist only in the attitude of software engineers. This is perhaps understandable considering the training methods and tools available to supposedly 'help' them. The evidence shows that quality of management and experience of personnel involved in development contribute more significantly to the success of a development project than any technical aspect. This unfortunately means that the process is highly susceptible to staff turnover which, if uncontrolled, can lead to pending disaster for the users. This suggests a 'better' system would be developed if 'experience' was maintained at a process level, rather that at an individual level. Conventional methods of software engineering are based upon a defined set of requirements which are determined at the beginning of the software process. This thesis presents an alternative paradigm which requires only a minimal set of requirements at the outset and actively encourages changes and additional requirements, even with a mature software product. The basis of this alternative approach is the fonn of the 'requirements specification' and the capturing and re-use of the 'experience' maintained by the software process itself.

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The proliferation of collaborative computer applications in the past decade has resulted in a corresponding increase in the need for multi-user interfaces. The current research seeks to contribute to the design of a user-centered multi-user interface for a group ranking task. User requirements were identified by observing groups perform the ranking task in a non-computer environment. A design was proposed based on these identified requirements. The user-centered design was compared to preliminary designs based on the intuitions of programmers. The conclusions indicate that an analysis of observations in the non-computer environment does yield insight beyond the initial intuition of programmers. A prototype based on the user-centered design was implemented. Informal user evaluation was performed by observing users working with the prototype and obtaining verbal feedback both on the ease of use of the system and on possible improvements. The informal user evaluation provides evidence for the usefulness of user-centered design. The evaluation also suggests that not all features identified were found useful and not all features necessary were identified.

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The design metrics developed by the Design Metrics team at Ball State University are a suite of metrics that can be applied during the design phase of software development. The benefit of the metrics lies in the fact that the metrics can be applied early in the software development cycle. The suite includes the external design metric De,the internal design metric D27 D(G), the design balance metric DB, and the design connectivity metric DC.The suite of design metrics have been applied to large-scale industrial software as well as student projects. Bell Communications Research of New Jersey has made available a software system that can be used to apply design metrics to large-scale telecommunications software. This thesis presents the suite of design metrics and attempts to determine if the characteristics of telecommunications software are accurately reflected in the conventions used to compute the metrics. / Department of Computer Science

Effective software engineering techniques are needed to increase the reliability of software systems, to increase the productivity of development teams, and to reduce the costs of software development. Companies search for an effective software engineering process as they strive to reach higher process maturity levels and produce better software. To aid in this quest for better methods of software engineering. the Design Metrics Research Team at Ball State University has analyzed university and industry software to be able to detect error-prone modules. The research team has developed, tested and validated their design metrics and found them to be highly successful. These metrics were typically collected and calculated by hand. So that these metrics can be collected more consistently, more accurately and faster, the Design Metrics Analyzer for Ada (DMA) was created. The DMA collects metrics from the files submitted based on a subprogram level. The metrics results are then analyzed to yield a list of stress points, which are modules that are considered to be error-prone or difficult for developers. This thesis describes the Design Metrics Analyzer, explains its output and how it functions. Also, ways that the DMA can be used in the software development life cycle are discussed. / Department of Computer Science