CRITICAL CODE
SOFTWARE PRODUCIBILITY FOR DEFENSE
NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL
OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES
THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES PRESS
Washington, D.C.
www.nap.edu
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NOTICE: The project that is the subject of this report was approved by the Governing Board of the National Research Council, whose members are drawn from the councils of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. The members of the committee responsible for the report were chosen for their special competences and with regard for appropriate balance.
Support for this project was provided by the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Department of Defense, with assistance from the National Science Foundation under sponsor award number CNS-0541636 and by the Office of Naval Research under sponsor award number N00014-04-1-0736. Any opinions expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the agencies and organizations that provided support for the project.
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THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES
Advisers to the Nation on Science, Engineering, and Medicine
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COMMITTEE FOR ADVANCING SOFTWARE-INTENSIVE SYSTEMS PRODUCIBILITY
WILLIAM L. SCHERLIS,
Carnegie Mellon University,
Chair
ROBERT F. BEHLER,
The MITRE Corporation
BARRY W. BOEHM,
University of Southern California
LORI A. CLARKE,
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
MICHAEL A. CUSUMANO,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
MARY ANN DAVIDSON,
Oracle Corporation
LARRY DRUFFEL,
Software Engineering Institute
RUSSELL FREW,
Lockheed Martin
JAMES LARUS,
Microsoft Corporation
GREG MORRISETT,
Harvard University
WALKER ROYCE,
IBM
DOUGLAS C. SCHMIDT,
Carnegie Mellon University
JOHN P. STENBIT, Independent Consultant
KEVIN J. SULLIVAN,
University of Virginia
Staff
JON EISENBERG, Director,
CSTB
LYNETTE I. MILLETT, Senior Program Officer
JOAN D. WINSTON, Program Officer (until May 2008)
ENITA A. WILLIAMS, Associate Program Officer
ERIC WHITAKER, Senior Program Assistant
COMPUTER SCIENCE AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS BOARD
ROBERT F. SPROULL,
Oracle Corporation,
Chair
PRITHVIRAJ BANERJEE,
Hewlett-Packard Company
STEVEN M. BELLOVIN,
Columbia University
SEYMOUR E. GOODMAN,
Georgia Institute of Technology
JOHN E. KELLY III,
IBM
JON M. KLEINBERG,
Cornell University
ROBERT KRAUT,
Carnegie Mellon University
SUSAN LANDAU,
Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
DAVID E. LIDDLE,
US Venture Partners
WILLIAM H. PRESS,
University of Texas, Austin
PRABHAKAR RAGHAVAN,
Yahoo! Labs
DAVID E. SHAW,
D.E. Shaw Research
ALFRED Z. SPECTOR,
Google, Inc.
JOHN A. SWAINSON,
Silver Lake
PETER SZOLOVITS,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
PETER J. WEINBERGER,
Google, Inc.
ERNEST J. WILSON,
University of Southern California
Staff
JON EISENBERG, Director
VIRGINIA BACON TALATI, Associate Program Officer
SHENAE BRADLEY, Senior Program Assistant
RENEE HAWKINS, Financial and Administrative Manager
HERBERT S. LIN, Chief Scientist
EMILY ANN MEYER, Program Officer
LYNETTE I. MILLETT, Senior Program Officer
ERIC WHITAKER, Senior Program Assistant
ENITA A. WILLIAMS, Associate Program Officer
For more information on CSTB, see its Web site at http://www.cstb.org, write to CSTB, National Research Council, 500 Fifth Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20001, call (202) 334-2605, or email the CSTB at cstb@nas.edu.
Preface
The Committee for Advancing Software-Intensive Systems Producibility was appointed by the National Research Council (NRC) and convened under the auspices of the NRC’s Computer Science and Telecommunications Board (CSTB) to assess the nature of the national investment in software research and, in particular, to consider ways to revitalize the knowledge base needed to design, produce, and employ software-intensive systems for tomorrow’s defense needs. The statement of task is provided in Box P.1.
This report contemplates Department of Defense (DoD) needs and priorities for software research and suggests a research agenda and related actions. This is the final report of the committee, and it builds on two prior reports—Summary of a Workshop on Software Intensive Systems and Uncertainty at Scale1 and Preliminary Observations on DoD Software Research Needs and Priorities.2 This report draws on the briefings listed in Appendix A.
The committee considered four sets of questions:
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To what extent is software capability significant for the DoD? Is it becoming more or less significant and strategic in systems development?
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Will the advances in software producibility needed by the DoD emerge unaided from industry at a pace sufficient to meet evolving defense requirements?
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What are the opportunities for the DoD to make more effective use of emerging technology to improve software capability and software producibility?
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In which technology areas should the DoD invest in research to advance defense software capability and producibility?
Chapter 1 of this report addresses the first two of these questions. It discusses the essential and evolving role of software in defense systems and the distinctive and unusual characteristics of the software
1 |
National Research Council (NRC), 2007, Summary of a Workshop on Software Intensive Systems and Uncertainty at Scale, Washington, DC: National Academies Press. Available online at http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11936. Last accessed August 10, 2010. |
2 |
NRC, 2008, Preliminary Observations on DoD Software Research Needs and Priorities: A Letter Report, Washington, DC: National Academies Press. Available online at http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12172. Last accessed August 10, 2010 |
BOX P.1 Statement of Task This study will bring together academic and industry software systems researchers, software and software tool vendors (suppliers), and systems integrators who comprise the community of skills required for future successes in complex software-intensive systems required by the Department of Defense (DoD). They will:
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used in such systems. The chapter also contemplates the extent to which the DoD can rely on industry to innovate at a rate fast enough to allow it to fully meet future defense software requirements.
Chapters 2, 3, and 4 of this report focus on three principal clusters of challenges to software producibility wherein the DoD has particularly unusual needs or “leading demand.” These chapters address the third question presented in the statement of task and describe process management for innovative software systems development (Chapter 2), architectural leadership for large-scale software-intensive systems (Chapter 3), and the need to take a strategic approach to assurance (Chapter 4). These chapters, taken together, address the core features of what we mean by software producibility—the capacity to design, produce, assure, and evolve software-intensive systems in a predictable manner while effectively managing risk, cost, schedule, quality, and complexity.
Chapter 5 discusses the value of research in enhancing software producibility for the DoD. It addresses the role of academic research, the synergy between industry and academic research, and the impact of past investments. It then tackles the fourth question and offers a seven-part agenda for advancing DoD software capability: architecture, assurance, process and economic models, requirements, language and tools, cyber-physical systems, and human-systems interaction.
The committee thanks all those who participated in its workshops and contributed to its deliberations (Appendix A). The committee would also like to thank the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board staff, including Enita Williams, Jon Eisenberg, Lynette Millett, Joan Winston, and Eric Whitaker, who have ably managed the project and coordinated the team effort through three separate reports. Enita Williams and Jon Eisenberg deserve special thanks and appreciation for their heroic effort in the preparation and editing of this final report, which would not have been possible without their highly capable support and collaboration.
William L. Scherlis, Chair
Committee for Advancing Software-Intensive Systems Producibility
Acknowledgment of Reviewers
This report has been reviewed in draft form by individuals chosen for their diverse perspectives and technical expertise, in accordance with procedures approved by the National Research Council’s (NRC’s) Report Review Committee. The purpose of this independent review is to provide candid and critical comments that will assist the institution in making its published report as sound as possible and to ensure that the report meets institutional standards for objectivity, evidence, and responsiveness to the study charge. The review comments and draft manuscript remain confidential to protect the integrity of the deliberative process. We wish to thank the following individuals for their review of this report:
Rick Buskens, Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Laboratories
Grady Campbell, Software Engineering Institute
William Campbell, BAE Systems
John Gilligan, Gilligan Group
William Griswold, University of California, San Diego
Anita Jones, University of Virginia
Annette Krygiel, Independent Consultant
Steve Lipner, Microsoft, Inc.
David Notkin, University of Washington
Frank Perry, SAIC
Alfred Z. Spector, Google, Inc.
Daniel C. Sturman, Google, Inc.
John Swainson, CA, Inc.
Mark N. Wegman, IBM
Although the reviewers listed above have provided many constructive comments and suggestions, they were not asked to endorse the conclusions or recommendations, nor did they see the final draft of the report before its release. The review of this report was overseen by William H. Press, University of Texas at Austin. Appointed by the NRC, he was responsible for making certain that an independent examination of this report was carried out in accordance with institutional procedures and that all review comments were carefully considered. Responsibility for the final content of this report rests entirely with the authoring committee and the institution.