Objective: Software engineering technologies for building better software are complementary to software process. As in other engineering disciplines, both are needed for significantly improving NASA SW development for aerospace flight/ground, science analysis, and engineering design software. In this workshop we will focus on the technology half of requirements. This needs-assessment workshop will address both current problems (as evidenced by cost overruns, schedule overruns, and outright mission failures) and also anticipate future requirements, as even more mission capabilities are embedded in software. It includes a technology gap analysis that will address the difference between technology/methods available today and the capabilities required to meet future needs.

The goal of the workshop is to develop an assessment report on software engineering technology needs and gaps for NASA, with a primary focus for code T (the new exploration code) but also informed by requirements from other parts of NASA and related agencies, such as the FAA. Technologies include tools and methods for the full span of the software lifecycle – e.g., requirements analysis through maintenance and execution monitoring, configuration management, and also tools to facilitate adherence to software process. The assessment will represent customer (stakeholder) pull, though with software technologist input in order to shape it into a forward-looking vision.

Background: To the general public, NASA is about rockets, spaceships and planes.  As you peer inside the spaceship, however, you see that almost every endeavor within the agency today depends critically upon the computing and software technologies that control the missions, enable scientific investigations and provided advanced engineering environments. Activities such as the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) SIRTF, EOSDIS, the Space Station, the Air Transportation Management System, and almost all others within NASA depend critically upon software. 

While software offers a diverse range of benefits to a mission, there also are numerous challenges in the cost-effective development of reliable software. Recent high-profile cost overruns or mission failures have highlighted some of these problems. For example, the Mars Polar Lander mission was lost due to a simple software error where a variable was not initialized while the SIRTF mission had a very large budget over run in large part due to problems in the reuse of legacy software inappropriately. In other areas, the existing limitations in the software development technologies radically limit our ability on a program such as the International Space Station due to the cost of recertification if we want to change any key functionality. Furthermore, missions often have a very difficult time determining how to effectively validate the system in areas where it depends critically upon the software.

Agenda: The first day of the workshop will be a plenary session starting with a keynote address, followed by presentation of the survey results, and then presentations by representative stakeholders. The second and morning of the third days will be breakout sessions with the charter of deriving assessments of needs and gaps for different subtopics. The afternoon of the third day will be a plenary session to cross-correlate results from the subtopics. Subsequent to the workshop, participants will be asked to provide comments on the draft report.

Workshop Committee:

            Professor Daniel Cooke, Texas Tech University –  workshop chair

            Dr. Michael Lowry, NASA Ames Research Center – organizing chair

            Dr. Matthew Barry, Jet Propulsion Laboratory

            Dr. Richard Doyle, Jet Propulsion Laboratory

            Dr. Cordell Green, Kestrel Institute      

Sponsorship: NASA Ames and the Engineering Complex Systems program (http://ecs.arc.nasa.gov/), are sponsoring this needs assessment workshop for software engineering technologies.

Participation: Participation is by invitation only, space is limited. Please send inquiries. to the organizing chair, Dr. Michael Lowry (lowry@mail.arc.nasa.gov). The local arrangements chair, Ms. Saba Shaikh sshaikh@mail.arc.nasa.gov can help with hotel and other logistics.