Life at Fraunhofer Center - Maryland

1. Life atFraunhofer Center - Maryland Dr. Forrest Shull Division Director, Measurement & Knowledge Management

2. Fraunhofer Centerfor Empirical Software Engineering(College Park, MD) • Not-for-profit, university-affiliated • Mandate is applied research and technology transfer • Via measurement, evaluation and improvement • We bridge research and application, working with: • Government organizations (DoD, NASA, …) • Large industrial companies (Boeing, Motorola, …) • Small/medium-sized organizations (KeyMind,…) • National labs (Los Alamos Labs, ….) • Universities and research centers (CMU, USC, MIT, …) • …and others (SEI, MITRE, JHU/APL, ...)

3. An example project: HPCS • US Govt. wants to buy new HPC systems for national labs • Criteria for choosing machines: minimize time to solution (TTS) • Not all labs are the same • Programmers may have different levels of experience • One system may be more productive for experts, another for novices • Problems being solved are different • One system may be better for climate modeling, another for protein folding • Research question: • Which systems / development approaches will result in higher productivity for given users, problem domains, etc.? TTS = Development time + Computing time

4. 100 50 % effort reduction 0 -50 -100 Buffon Matvec Resistors Life Sharks An example project: HPCS Effect of model & problem on % Effort saved using OpenMP instead of MPI Effort Performance Performance by problem/HPC model

5. A day in the life… • Responsibilities • Project management • Customer deliverables • Business development • Publications & Conference presentations • Rewards • Publications & Conference presentations • Work with… • Many different people • In varied contexts • Doing interesting things • Independence

6. How to prepare for a job like this • Read Fred Brooks, “The Computer Scientist as Toolsmith II” • Communications of the ACM, March 1996, 39(3): 61-68. • Be interested in many different fields and how they use computers and software to accomplish things • Read Victor Basili et al., “SEL’s Software Process-Improvement Program” • IEEE Software, Nov. 1995, 12(6): 83-87. • Be interested in research that makes real changes • Be interested in how to reason about the effect of new methods • Read Barry Boehm, “Software Engineering Economics” • Prentice Hall, 1981. • Be interested in choices, decisions and tradeoffs

7. How to prepare for a job like this • Spend some time as a software developer and understand the frustrations • Be interested in how humans use technology • And have some background in stats to reason about this • Be attracted to both university and industry

8. Backups

9. High Dependability Computing Project Goals • Improve NASA’s ability to build dependable software • Define dependability (system & stakeholder perspectives) • Investigate, foster, and transfer to practice technologies • Use testbeds for technology assessment: scaled-down or preliminary versions of systems in NASA relevant domains which require high dependability, e.g. • Autonomous rover • Air traffic control systems Rocky 7 rover

10. Using the Experience Base: The Best Practices Clearinghouse

11. I’m on a security-critical project in an industrial organization. Let me browse practices that help me reach CMMI KPAs. I’m working in the DoD and read about Fagan inspections. Is anyone at a similar organization using it? I’m working on an warfighter at an industry contractor organization. Show me practices that can help reduce schedule. Using the Experience Base: The Best Practices Clearinghouse Flexiblefront-end