Traceability

Well we all know how important requirements traceability is for software engineering.

I just found a curious example of traceability that has a lot to do with business processes and how the financial market does operate. I came to it from watching a video on foreclosures from ABC news.

The written material is here. It is an example of the lack of a proper process for keeping traceability. A side effect: for some people, it is becoming a possible relief, or at least a way of postponing losing their homes.

Software Transparency II

After posting a brief description of what I believe Software Transparency should mean, I found several references to this keyword (using Google).

1. A company that registered the term transparency software as a trade mark. They sell database reverse engineering tools.
2. A blog note by Dana Blankenhorn on ZDNet commenting on the announcement by Palamida of an auditing product that helps software transparency. It also mentions GroundWork, a company that sells IT infrastructure monitoring.
3. Reflective is a company that sells software testing technology, it uses the term in a restricted way, for the consuption of software developers.
4. Eric Sink reporting on the concept of transparency at Microsoft. It is not a conincidence that it comes from the Visual Studio group.
5. A note from Dana Blankenhorn on Corante with the title "Open Source Transparency", brings up the key point: "you can see the code". However, who will understand it, and yet, who guarantees that the code you see is the code that is running.
   
6. Prof. Tanimoto presented a keynote at VL/HCC 05 where he links transparency to interfaces:

Transparency is an aspect of software comprising openness in design, glass-box features, and support for interactive inspection.

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03/20/09

Please see other notes on the topic following the tags.

More details on software transparency are available here.