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Seminar fouses on predictable software design

Edited by the Electronicstalk editorial team Aug 30, 2004

Verum Consultants is sponsoring a seminar on "Predictable software design in business-critical systems" in Amsterdam on 22th September 2004.

Verum Consultants is sponsoring a seminar on "Predictable software design in business-critical systems" in Amsterdam on 22th September 2004.

Organised by EDA Exhibitions, the one-day event will offer insights into strategies, methods and tools for bringing predictability to the software development process and ensuring the reliability of completed software applications.

Alongside industry luminaries including Professor AW Roscoe, Director of the Computing Laboratory, Oxford University, Verum CTO Guy Broadfoot will present share an important insight into analytical software design - a new approach to software engineering that marries mathematics to existing specification and design methods.

Predictability and reliability are key issues plaguing the software development industry.

Because software designs and specifications are rarely tested for completeness and correctness, it is estimated that almost 50 per cent of software development costs relate to detecting and removing defects that were injected very early in the design process.

Although industry analyst IDC estimates that software accounts for approximately 75% of a product's overall development, research from the Data and Analysis Centre for Software (DACS) claims 15 to 20% of all software defects are delivered to customers.

It is a problem that is costing the US economy an estimated $60 billion annually.

Verum believes that this is because existing software development models, based on testing as the principle means to remove software defects, are inherently flawed.

Because designs are not verified, software testing involves finding and removing not only implementation defects, but all defects introduced through the development lifecycle.

The inherently nondeterministic nature of behaviourally complex software means that it is essentially untestable.

"Predictability remains the biggest challenge to the software industry yet little has been done to overcome this", commented Guy Broadfoot, CTO, Verum.

"Improvements in the quality with which most organisations develop software have been made, but these improvements have been largely incremental while the amount and complexity of software being developed has increased exponentially".