UNIVERSITY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

                    COMPUTER SCIENCE RESEARCH COLLOQUIUM

                                  presents

                       A Tale of Two (or Three) Models: 
                   System Dynamics and Long-term Software
                 Process Simulations for the FEAST Project

       
                          speaker: Dr. Paul Wernick 
                        University of Hertfordshire

                            1 May 2002 (Wednesday)

                           Lecture Theatre LC108
                                  3 - 4 pm

                 Coffee/tea and biscuits will be available.

                       EVERYONE IS WELCOME TO ATTEND!

   Abstract:


The FEAST (Feedback, Evolution and Software Technology) research programme
led by Professor Manny Lehman of Imperial College has researched for
several years into the long-term processes by which software products are
evolved over many releases. Our results have supported Lehman's FEAST
hypothesis, which states that the main evolution trends are strongly
influenced by feedback mechanisms outside the software production process.
System Dynamics is ideally suited to the high-level simulation of such
processes, since it can both represent their structures and simulate their
observed behaviours.

In this seminar I will introduce System Dynamics as a simulation mechanism,
and explain why it was adopted for FEAST. Having described a number of the
simulation models which I and FEAST co-workers have developed, including
both the model structures and the calibration of simulation outputs against
real-world software evolution trends, I will then show how the work has
improved our understanding of the underlying processes.




   Colloquium Abstracts: On-line:
   http://homepages.feis.herts.ac.uk/~nehaniv/colloq/