Computer Science Seminar
Software Engineering Using Rationale
Dr. Janes E. Burge - Miami University

Friday ~ February 15, 2008 ~ 3:00 PM
Rekhi Computer Science Hall ~ Room 214

Many decisions have to be made when developing a software system and a successful outcome depends on how well
thought out these decisions were. The decisions made, and alternatives considered, form the rationale for the system.
The rationale goes beyond standard documentation by describing the developers intent and all alternatives considered
rather than only those selected. While the potential usefulness of this information is seldom questioned, the rationale
is rarely captured in practice. There is a pervasive belief that developers will not be willing to take the time and effort
to perform what might be perceived as extra documentation. In order to encourage rationale capture there needs to be some
incentive to do so.

We feel that the key to motivating rationale capture is to provide compelling uses and tool support integrated with the
development environment. This talk describes the Software Engineering Using RATionale system (SEURAT). SEURAT is
integrated with the Eclipse Interactive Development Environment and inferences over the rationale to evaluate decision
alternatives and perform impact assessment when requirements, development criteria, and assumptions change. In addition
to development environment integration, SEURAT also supports importing rationale extracted from external sources, such
as Word documents to help further reduce the effort of rationale capture.