Path: utzoo!censor!geac!torsqnt!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!ists!yunexus!davecb From: davecb@yunexus.YorkU.CA (David Collier-Brown) Newsgroups: comp.software-eng Subject: Re: Looking for books concerning software factories... Message-ID: <19867@yunexus.YorkU.CA> Date: 6 Jan 91 03:15:07 GMT References: Organization: York U. Computing Services Lines: 31 jtn@ADS.COM (John T. Nelson) writes: | Can anyone recommend some books concerning "Software Factories?" I'm | told that this concept is very big over in Japan right now and | competes with CASE tools as a software engineering/design paradigm. DANGER, DANGER, WILL ROBINSON! At one point several large organizations understood ``software factory'' to mean ``completely separate requirements, design, implementaton and testing organizations'', in a conscious model of the assembly line of a factory. Alas, my then employer was one of them, and proposed this to their various software ``build houses'', supposedly as a result of sucessfull use in Japan. In the absence of a requirements verification methodology, this placed the designers at risk of designing something that did not meet the user/customer needs. Ditto designer->implementer, specifier->tester, etc. In part this spurred design verifications systems like Wellmade, but mostly it caused fear and loathing among the developers, who found themselves at risk for being unable to implement impossible (occasionally literally impossible!) designs. The site which recommended this to the corporation no longer exists... nor does the computer branch of the corporation, as it was sold to france. This year the french branch was taken over by someone else. --dave (I do **NOT** recomend this understanding of the term) c-b -- David Collier-Brown, | davecb@Nexus.YorkU.CA | lethe!dave 72 Abitibi Ave., | Willowdale, Ontario, | Even cannibals don't usually eat their CANADA. 416-223-8968 | friends.