Tentative Keynote Speakers
Professor Joxan Jaffar
Department of Computer Science,
National University of Singapore.
Joxan Jaffar received his B.Sc.(Hons, 1st class) and M.Sc. from Melbourne University in 1979 and 1981, and his Ph.D. from Monash University in 1985. From 1982 through 1986, he was a Lecturer in Monash, and from 1986 through 1995, he was a Research Staff Member and Project Leader in the IBM. T.J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, New York. He joined NUS in 1995, became Head of the Department of Computer Science in 1998, and Dean of the School of Computing from 2001-2007. His interests are in programming languages and applications, with emphasis on the logic and constraint programming paradigms. Amongst his main contributions are the principles of constraint logic programming, and the widely-used CLP(R) system. His current interests center around program analysis and verification, and the design of concurrent programming languages.
Symbolic Tracing for Program Reasoning
Formal reasoning about programs is a key component of software
engineering. Unfortunately, present tools for program reasoning are typically limited in scope, or else they require manual aid of an expert nature. In this talk, I will present a new framework for the generation of symbolic execution traces with emphases on transparency,flexibility and increasingly, practical performance. At the heart of the framework is Constraint Logic Programming (CLP), which was originally designed as a high-level declarative programming language. In this work, we adapt and extend the concepts of CLP to focus on representing the operational behavior of programs. We then show a number of algorithms that form the basis of efficient implementation.
Dr. Jorge L. Díaz-Herrera
Professor and Dean
B Thomas Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences,
Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York
Dr. Jorge L Díaz-Herrera is Professor of Computing and became founding Dean of the B Thomas Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences at Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York, in July, 2002. Prior to this appointment, he was Professor of Computer Science and Department Head at Southern Polytechnic State University in Atlanta and Yamacraw project coordinator with Georgia Tech. He was a senior member of the technical staff of the Software Engineering Institute teaching in Carnegie Mellon’s Master of Software Engineering and conducting research in Product Line Engineering. He was department chair of the Software Engineering Department at Monmouth University in NJ, and on the faculty of the departments of Computer Science at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA and at SUNY Binghamton, NY. Dr. Díaz-Herrera completed his undergraduate education in Venezuela, and holds both a Master’s and Ph.D. in Computing Studies from Lancaster University, in the UK. He recently completed the Graduate Certificate in Management Leadership in Education from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education. Dr. Díaz-Herrera has conducted extensive consulting services with a number of firms and government agencies including: New York Stock Exchange (SIAC), MITRE Corp., the Institute for Defense Analysis, General Electric, Singer-Link, TRW, EG&G, IBM, among others. He has chaired several national and international conferences, and has been a technical reviewer for NSF, ASEE, and several conferences and journals. He has more than 80 publications. Today, he is focusing his experience in software engineering in the areas of education, and software product lines for embedded, ubiquitous systems. He currently serves in several boards and advisory committees including the National Science Foundation, the Software Engineering Institute, and ihe has also provided professional expertise to international organizations including the European Software Institute, Australian Defense Science and Technology Office, Kyoto Computing Gaikum, Kuwait University, Cairo University, among others.
Research Challenges for Institutionalizing Software Product Lines
The competitiveness of development organizations depends increasingly on the ability to improve their design and development processes faster than their competitors. A promising approach is to move our focus from engineering single systems to engineering families of systems by identifying “reusable” solutions that support the future development of multiple systems. An organization that focuses on a “range of similar” products can potentially take advantage of economies of scope, a benefit that comes from developing one asset used in multiple contexts, thus reducing development, maintenance, support and marketing costs, since products would share a common design, development effort, and actual components. Building systems from a common component base reduces risk and improves quality by using trusted, proven components; it reduces cycle time and cost of new applications by eliminating redundancy. An asset-based approach allows the management of legacy systems more efficiently, increasing the likelihood of longer time-IN-market. And finally, an organization based on product lines evolves a common marketing strategy, and strengthens core competency around strategic business interests and goals. Thus, the overall goal is to produce quality products consistently and predictably by moving toward an asset-supported, component-based product lines development approach. This transition must be planned carefully encompassing not only technical issues but also organizational and business aspects. Assessing the sstate-of-the-art helps in focusing the research agenda in the critical problems limiting the advancement of the field. What are the top remaining problems for SPL research? What are current top areas of SPL research? In this presentation, we address these and other questions referring to the technological challenges of building product lines. Due to space constraints however, we do not discuss specific technology in detail. Rather, we present a roadmap for the various research areas, relevance and promising approaches. We discuss briefly some of the most relevant contributions in the SPL research timeline from details of a survey we have conducted. We conclude with a discussion of the effort that lies ahead.
Nirbhaya Pathak
Director – Software Engineering
Global Technology Development Group
Motorola Technology Sdn Bhd, Penang, Malaysia
Nirbhaya Pathak is the Director of Software Engineering responsible for the Research & Development (R&D) operations in Motorola Technology Sdn. Bhd in Penang. Motorola Penang is one of the key center for developing two way radios and accessories. Nirbhaya previously held the position of the Senior Operations Manager in Motorola India Research & Development (R&D) Center, responsible for developing GSM, 3G and LTE technologies for Mobile handsets. He has been involved in Product Design and Development for more than 9 years in Motorola; he has been instrumental for developing first 5 Megapixl camera multimedia rich phones for Motorola. Nirbhaya was responsible for setting-up fully automated Mobile Phones testing lab in Motorola India Hyderabad center. Nirbhaya carries the wide experience of managing multi site development teams including Singapore, China, Denmark and France. Prior to joining Motorola, Nirbhaya was Technical lead in Hughes Software Systems in India and Hughes Network Systems in Maryland USA. During the three years stint, Nirbhaya was responsible for developing GPRS based satellite Mobile handsets. Before Joining Hughes, Nirbhaya was Defence Scientist in Defence Research Development Organization (DRDO) India. During three years tenure in DRDO, Nirbhaya developed Microstrip Antennas for airborne radars. As a defence scientist, Nirbhaya published more than 10 International publications on Microstrip Anetnnas. Nirbhaya holds a Bachelor of Engineering in Electronics and Telecommunications from Vikram University Ujjain, India. Nirbhaya is currently authoring a book on management as well.
Paradox between Software Development Productivity and Success Rate – Are we striking the right balance?
Software systems produced in recent years are more complex and sophisticated than those of yester years. At the same time there is constant pressure to produce quality software in a shrunk cycle time due to fierce competition and rapid change in technology. Software industry in general is struggling to strike the right balance between productivity and success rate. The success rate is defined from two schools of thoughts: “Does the delivered system meet or exceed the expectations we had for it?” and “Did the system come in "up to spec," on time, and on budget?” This keynote describes an approach to achieve continuous improvement in success rate and productivity by using the combination of “Methodologies”, “Processes” and “Changing behavior pattern of software Engineers”. Undoubtedly there has been substantial amount of work in “Methodologies” and “Processes” over the years, but amalgamation of two in a way so that engineers who are developing the software can relate to and feel motivated to improve success rate and productivity, has been missing. This keynote addresses this issue, by focusing on the following:
- Systematic inclusion of practices of Six Sigma for Product Development (SSPD) to translate the Voice of Customer (VOC) into measurable Requirements. Historical data have shown that errors in requirements contribute to a consistent, absolute project failure rate (~50%) that can’t be reduced.
- Critical KPIs from CMMi (QPM and PP) to ensure project life cycle remains predictable.
- Use of “Agile” methodology for development to ensure motivation of engineers remains high at the same time generating better productivity and low defect density in turn resulting into high probability of success rate.