Quality Aware Software Engineering


Speaker: Heinrich C. Mayr

Affiliation: Universität Klagenfurt, Austria

Time: Monday 17/11/2014 from 14:00 to 15:00

Venue: Access Grid UWS. Presented from Parramatta (EB.1.32), accessible from Campbelltown (26.1.50) and Penrith (Y239).

Abstract:

Despite of nearly 50 years of software engineering research and practice, software development projects often exceed the budget or even fail. A typical cause of this is a mismatch between the user expectations and the actual properties of the developed product. Such mismatch may occur even if previously a comprehensive requirements specification has been agreed upon, and mostly pertains to non-functional properties, in particular the many-facetted concept of quality.

Consequently, an effective, smooth and properly managed communication between the different parties involved in a software development project is crucial over all its stages: it will ensure a common understanding of the user expectations and the realizable/realized properties.

The QuASE (Quality Aware Software Engineering) project, which is performed in cooperation with four software companies and funded by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG), aims at a comprehensive solution for that issue with a focus on quality-related aspects. It will provide support for managing the understandability of communicated information, for the reusability of that information, and for the quality of decisions based on that information.

The seminar will report on the goals, the current stage und the findings of that project. In particular, we will (1) discuss the architecture of the QuASE system, (2) the current status of its implementation, (3) the relevant knowledge structures representing quality-related information, (4) the mapping of raw communication data into these knowledge structures, and (5) typical usage scenarios.


Biography:

Heinrich C. Mayr received his doctorate from the University of Grenoble (France) in 1975. Until 1983 he was an assistant professor at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT, Germany) and a visiting professor at several universities. From 1984-1990 he was CEO of a German software company, since 1990 he has been full professor at Universität Klagenfurt, Austria. For 9 years he served as Dean, from 2006 until 2012 as the Rector.

His research focusses on human centered informatics including IS design methodologies, natural language based user centered requirements analysis, knowledge management and modeling for ambient assistance; it is documented by more than 190 publications.

He has been, among others, VP of the Council of European Professional Informatics Societies (CEPIS), President of GI (Gesellschaft für Informatik), and member of the OCG (Austrian Computer Society) board.

Currently he is editor in chief of the GI-Edition "Lecture Notes in Informatics", council member of the Carinthian College of Education, member of the TC Information Systems of the academic accreditation agency ASIIN, chairman of the board of trustees of Stadtwerke Klagenfurt AG, and chairman of the scientific council of the Software Internet Cluster SIC.

He has been awarded as Fellow of GI, ER Fellow, Honorary Doctor (Nat. Technical University Kharkiv), and Honored Professor of Sciences (State University Kherson); and he is a recipient of the Golden Medal of the city of Klagenfurt.