Improved software engineering decision support through automatic argument reduction tools.pdfVIP

Improved software engineering decision support through automatic argument reduction tools Tim Menzies West Virginia University tim@menzies.us James Kiper, Miami University, kiperjd@ Martin S. Feather, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, martin.s.feather@ Abstract Some of the most influential decisions about a software system are made in the early phases of the software develop- ment life cycle. Those decisions about requirements and de- sign are generally made by teams of software engineers and domain experts who must weigh the complex interactions among requirements and the associated developmental and operational risks of those requirements. Some of these early life cycle decisions are more influential, or perhaps fateful, to subsequent software design and development than are others. When debating about complex systems with a large num- ber of options, humans can often be slower than an AI sys- tem at identifying the clusters of key decisions that give the most leverage. By focusing a group of human domain ex- perts or software engineers on these key decision clusters, more time can be devoted to these pivotal decisions and less time is wasted on irrelevancies. 1 Introduction In early phases of a system development, many crucial decisions about software are taken. In the process of re- quirements elicitation and analysis, it is common for clients to request much more than can be afforded - either because of budgetary constraints, time limitations, or other issues like safety concerns. That is, there are risks associated with requirements. (In this context, we take a broad definition of 0 SEDECS2003: the 2nd International Workshop on Software Engi- neering Decision Support (part of SEKE2003); June 20 2003 http:// /seke/seke03.html.Date April 21, 2003. WP ref: 03/sekew/star1. URL:http://menzies.us/pdf/03star1v4. pdf risk - anything that gets in the way of satisfying a require- ment.) There are often many things that can be done to lower t