Track: Software Technology
Minitrack:  The Business Model of Product and Process Assurance

There is little doubt on the necessity and value of assurance activities such as software quality assurance (SQA), verification and validation (V&V), and capability maturity (CM). However, as with any business activity, assurance incurs cost, a cost for which a healthy return on investment is expected. At least the activity needs to prove cost-effective. There have been very few attempts to assess the relative cost-effectiveness of the broad range of technology product and process assurance methods empirically. This raises a number of important technology management questions including:

• What is the “right” amount of assurance to perform?

• How can the benefit of assurance be measured and assessed?

• Is it more cost-effective to perform assurance on a per-project basis, or as an institutionalized effort balanced applied across an organization?

• Measuring the impact of process improvement?

• Improving software quality through effective use of metrics

• How do you create an effective measurement program?

• What is the business case for assurance?

• How can the quality of assurance be assured?

• What is the balance of effort of assurance and effort of the other activities?

• How do the domain specific factors affect the benefit and the effort of assurance?

• What should we do for verification and validation for software product?

• How do we know the quality of the assurance activity?

Suggested Paper Subjects

• Determining appropriate amount of assurance

• ROI for assurance

• Assessing value of assurance

• Automated versus non-automated quality metrics collection

• Economics of assurance

• Validation of assurance methods

• Cost-effectiveness of assurance techniques

• Business case for assurance

• Interplay of assurance and risk management

• Assurance Metrics

• Certification of assurance

• Certification of assurance practitioners

• Assurance cost and effort estimation

• Assurance standards

• Management of assurance

• Dealing with uncertainty in assurance assessments

• Use and abuse of historical data

• Need and rationale for assurance

• Training of assurance personal

• Model driven assurance
   

Minitrack Co-chairs:

Dan Port (Primary)
Shidler College of Business
Information Technology Management Dept
University of Hawaii at Manoa
Email: dport@hawaii.edu

Jairus Hihn
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Email: jhihn@jpl.nasa.gov

Tim Menzies
Department of Computer Science
University of West Virginia
Email: tim@menzies.us
 
Yuko Miyamoto
Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).
Email: miyamoto.yuko@jaxa.jp

Haruka Nakao
Japan Manned Space Systems Corporation (JAMSSS)
Email: harukanakao@yahoo.co.jp