Prof. Daniel M. Berry

(Cheriton School of Computer Science, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada)

“Role of Domain Ignorance in Software Development"

(Vortrag im Rahmen der "IESE Distinguished Lecture Series" in Kooperation mit dem Fachbereich Informatik)

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Several have reported observations that sometimes ignorance of the domain in a software development project is useful for promoting the elicitation of tacit assumptions and out-of-the-box ideas. This talk reports work putting the observation to two empirical tests. First, a survey was conducted among software development managers of varying experience to determine what software development activities they thought were at least helped by domain ignorance. Second, transcripts from fourteen interviews of presumably-domain-ignorant immigrants to new software development projects at one large company were examined to determine if the activities performed by those with the smoothest immigrations were activities that are at least helped by domain ignorance. The conclusions are that ignorance can play an important role in software development but there are a lot of other factors that influence immigration smoothness.

Bio: Daniel M. Berry got his B.S. in Mathematics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York, USA in 1969 and his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, USA in 1974. He was on the faculty of the Computer Science Department at the University of California, Los Angeles, California, USA from 1972 until 1987. He was in the Computer Science Faculty at the Technion, Haifa, Israel from 1987 until 1999. From 1990 until 1994, he worked for half of each year at the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, where he was part of a group that built CMU's Master of Software Engineering program. During the 1998-1999 academic year, he visited the Computer Systems Group at the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. In 1999, Berry moved to what is now the the Cheriton School of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo. Between 2008 and 2013, Berry held an Industrial Research Chair in Requirements Engineering sponsored by Scotia Bank and the National Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). Prof. Berry's current research interests are software engineering in general, and requirements engineering and electronic publishing in the specific.

Date:	Wednesday, 10.02.2016, 16:00 Uhr
Location:	Auditorium des Fraunhofer IESE