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The Westfall Team offers training and consulting services in the areas of software development and engineering, software quality and testing, software metrics and analytics, and the processes and methodologies involved with these important activities. They host several excellent articles, papers, and presentations covering software engineering and development. Here are links and descriptions to the best of them.

Software Engineering Articles, Papers & Presentations


Software Engineering Processes Papers & Presentations

Bidirectional Requirements Traceability: Traceability is used in mature software development projects. This article explores:

• What is traceability?
• Why is traceability a good practice?
• How is traceability performed?

A Methods "Discussion/Debate: Method Agility or What's a Methodology For? What’s the "correct" method to use for a software development project according to all the “best practices” advice?  Many folks advocating “lite” or agile methods would suggest there is no “best” practice you can apply across the board.  This paper, from Scott Duncan's presentation/discussion session at the 14th International Conference on Software Quality, is about beginning the process of answering some methodology related questions.

The What, Why, Who, When and How of Software Requirements: If the software requirements aren’t right, you won’t end up with the software that you need. This article discusses the following:

• Why: the benefits of having the right software requirements
• What: the various levels and types of requirements that need to be defined
• Who: identifying the stakeholders of the software requirements and getting them involved in the process
• When: requirements activities throughout the software development lifecycle
• How: techniques for eliciting, analyzing, specifying and validating software requirements

Software Standards and Models: Forward Reconnaissance: This article is a summary snapshot of the current state of certain key software related standards and models.  Discussed are the International Standards, the commercial, professional, or industrial association documents, and the capability models.

The Blame Game:  One roadblock we should think of removing from our lives is The Blame Game. Our individual and organizational propensity to blame can be a significant factor that weakens our foundations. This session describes how we can become aware of blaming techniques we use, the harm they cause, how much we are engaged in them, and how we can change these practices. 

Certification: A Competitive Advantage In Any Economy: Certification is commonly defined as formal recognition by an institution that an individual has demonstrated proficiency within and comprehension of a specified body of knowledge. Certification is a tool and when utilized to its full potential, can define career paths, contribute to a company’s bottom line, and drive product quality and customer satisfaction upwards. 

Aligned Empowerment - Could it become a Buzzword?  Empowerment is a basic staple of good management and in a growing number of organizations power is shifting from managers to employees.  This article discusses empowerment and how to ensure that empowerment is "aligned" through information sharing.
How to Create Useful Software Process Documentation: Unfortunately efforts to document our software development process often end up in documents and archives that are never used. This article introduces the reader to a simple, practical method for defining and documenting software processes that are easy to understand, easy to use and easy to maintain.
Process Definition Template: Utilize this template to document your software process definitions.  This template can be used to implement the techniques described in the How to Create Useful Software Process Documentation paper.  This paper also includes an example of a completed version of this template. 

Basis Path Testing for Structural and Integration Testing: Basis path testing is a structural testing technique that identifies test cases based on the flows or logical paths that can be taken through software application(s).  A basis path is a unique path through the software where no iterations are allowed; they’re atomic level paths, and all possible paths through the system are linear combinations of them. 

Software Program and Project Management Papers and Presentations

Software Acquisition & Supplier Management: Part 1 - Product Definition & Supplier Selection:  This paper discusses the first seven steps in the Software Acquisition and Supplier Management process, including:

• Step 1: Planning the acquisition
• Step 2: Defining the software product’s requirements
• Step 3: Determining the acquisition approach
• Step 4: Identifying and evaluating potential suppliers (and their software products)
• Step 5: Defining the contract requirements
• Step 6: Selecting a supplier
• Step 7: Negotiating and awarding the contract

Software Risk Management: The need for software risk management is illustrated in Gilb’s risk principle.  “If you don’t actively attack the risks, they will actively attack you" [Gilb-88].  In order to successfully manage a software project and reap our rewards, we must learn to identify, analyze, and control these risks.  This paper focuses on the basic concepts, processes, and techniques of software risk management.  

12 Steps to Useful Software Metrics: This paper outlines a cookbook method that the reader can use to simplify the journey from software metrics in concept to delivered information.
Metrics Report Definition Template: Utilize this template to document the design of your software metrics reports.  This template can help you implement the 12 Steps to Useful Software Metrics. 
Example - Metrics Report Definition: Example of a completed Metrics Report Definition document. 

Using a Measurement Framework to Rapidly Achieve Measurable Results: This paper describes a Process Measurement Framework^SM that rapidly achieves measurable results. This framework helps to ensure that all metrics are collected on a form, in a document, or in a database. This paper won the best paper award at the 13th International Conference on Software Quality, October 2003.

Are We Doing Well or Are We Doing Poorly?: What software metrics can do is provide information so you can make informed decisions and better choices.  This paper shows you how to establish useful decision criteria for different types of metrics. This paper won the Best Paper award at the 2003 Applications in Software Measurement (ASM) Conference. Here are the Presentation Slides for this paper.

Software Customer Satisfaction: This paper includes details on designing your own software customer satisfaction questionnaire, tracking survey results and example reports that turn survey data into useful information.  This paper won the Best Paper award at the 2002 Applications in Software Measurement (ASM) Conference.

Defect Removal Effectiveness: This short paper defines the metric of Defect Removal Effectiveness and gives examples of how to calculate it.

Defect Density: This article defines the metric of Defect Density and gives two examples of how it could be reported and utilized.

Cause & Effect Diagrams: This article by Linda Westfall discusses the purpose of Cause & Effect Diagrams and gives two examples of how this quality tool can be utilized.

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