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From: cole@farmhand.rtp.dg.com (Bill Cole)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: SE Terms Confusion
Message-ID: <1991Apr12.180440.13680@dg-rtp.dg.com>
Date: 12 Apr 91 18:04:40 GMT
References: <1991Apr11.144028.20787@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> <2081@taurus.cs.nps.navy.mil>
Sender: cole@farmhand (Bill Cole)
Organization: Data General Corporation, Research Triangle Park, NC
Lines: 23


 
|> May I suggest that a good starting place for defining these terms is
|> NOT coming up with new defintions, but rather examining existing
|> defintions.  A good place to start is the ANSI/IEEE Standard
|> Glossary of Software Engineering Terminology (Std. 729-1983 or a
|> revision), published by IEEE Computer Society Press.  One dictionary
|> can save a LOT of confusion.
|> 
|> All of the terms you list above are included, except software risk.
|> For that, may I suggest Barry Boehm's tutorial?  (By the way, the
|> standard technical definition of risk is something like "the probability 
|> of a given cost over a given period of time", you may wish to adapt
|> that for software...)
|> 


The problem with definitions is that they lie there on a piece of paper and don't
mean anything until they're applied.  I would agree that a definition is a fine
start, but the definition IS ONLY A START.  How a definition is implemented in some
specific task is the real definition.  

My own are the views,
/Bill