Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering (FhG/IES= E)

Institute Name: Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering (FhG/IESE), Kaiserslautern/Germany

Description: The Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering (IESE) focuses on research and development in the areas of innovative software development approaches as well as quality and process engineering. It supports the infusion of the results into industrial processes by a large variety of services. In the area of innovative software development approaches, methods and tools are being developed, experimentally validated, and adapted to the specific demands of individual companies. In addition, procedures are being developed, which allow companies to certify their software in terms of reliability and correctness. In the areas of quality and process engineering, software products and their development processes are measured, evaluated and improved in accordance with customer goals.

Cooperation with industrial partners include support for introducing continuous improvement programs as well as selecting, adapting, evaluating and introducing innovative software development approaches. Supplementary services include training and education, preparation for software certification, curricula for software process engineers, evaluation reports, patent assessments, software acquisition support and general consulting in software engineering.

Partner companies work in areas where the quality of the products and services depend heavily on the quality of the supporting software - e.g., automobiles, household devices, telecommunications, traffic and environment control, banks and insurances.

The Institute has been part of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft since January 1, 1996, and employs currently more than 70 scientific personnel. It maintains a close cooperation with the University of Kaiserslautern.

The Requirements Engineering (REQ) group

• tailors software process improvement approaches to requirements engineering processes and
• develops new methods
• for elicitation and specification employing use cases and goals ,
• for validation of requirements documents, in particular regarding ambiguities, and
• for knowledge-based requirements management.

Researchers associated with the project:

Dr. Barbara Paech,  Dipl.-Inform. Erik Kamsties

Brief CVs of Key Researchers:

Name: Dr. Barbara Paech
Nationality: German
Email: paech@iese.fhg.de
Academic Qualifications & Experience: Barbara Paech received her PhD from the Ludwig-Maximilians- Universität München in 1990 and her Habilitation from the Technical Universiät München in 1998. She is currently the head of the Quality Software Development department  at IESE. Before joining the IESE, she worked part-time at the Technical University München where she headed a research project on formal foundations for software engineering methods and an industry cooperation on reenginering of information systems with business objects. Her current interests are the transfer of techniques for information systems requirements engineering to embedded systems, the application of knowledge and documentation management  in the requirements engineering process and the influences of component technology on the requirements engineering process.
 

Name: Dipl.-Inform. Erik Kamsties
Nationality: German
Email: kamsties@iese.fhg.de
Academic Qualifications & Experience: Erik Kamsties received the diploma (M.S. degree) in computer science from the Technical University of Berlin in 1993. He is a member of the research staff in the Requirements Engineering Group of IESE. Before joining IESE, he worked from 1993 to 1996 as a research assistant at the University of Kaiserslautern in the Software Engineering Group of Prof. Rombach. His current research interests include bridging the gap between informal and formal requirements documents, as well as experimentation and requirements traceability. In particular, he is interested in surfacing ambiguities in natural language requirements in order to decrease defects in requirements and development products based on the natural language document..

Selected Publications:
D. Ansorge, K. Bergner, B. Deifel, N. Hawlitzky, A.Rausch, M. Sihling, V. Thurner, S.Vogel, C. Maier, B. Paech: Managing Componentware Development - Software Reuse and the V-Modell Process, CAISE'99, LNCS 1626, Springer, 1999

Erik Kamsties, Klaus Hörmann, Maud Schlich: Requirements Engineering in Small and Medium Enterprises. Requirements Engineering Journal 3:84-90 , CEIRE '98 Special Edition, Springer-Verlag, 1998.

Erik Kamsties, H. Dieter Rombach: A Framework for Evaluating System and Software Requirements Specification Approaches. Requirements Targeting Software and Systems Engineering - Proceedings of the International Workshop RTSE'97 (Manfred Broy, Bernhard Rumpe, ed.), LNCS 1526, 203-222, Springer-Verlag, 1998.

M. Broy, F. Huber, B. Paech, B. Rumpe, K. Spies: Software and System Modeling Based on a Unified Formal Semantics, in M.Broy, B Rumpe (eds.), Requirements Targeting Software and Systems Engineering, LNCS 1526, Springer-Verlag, 1998

B. Paech: On the Role of Activity Diagrams in UML, Int. Workshop UML'98, Mulhouse, June 1998

R. Breu, U. Hinkel, C. Hofmann, C. Klein, B. Paech, B. Rumpe, V. Thurner: Towards a Formalization of the Unified Modeling Language, European Conference on object-oriented Programming Languages, LNCS 1241, pp. 344-366

Bunse, Christian and Kamsties, Erik: Cleanroom Software Engineering: A Requirements Engineer's View, 3rd International Conference on Cleanroom Software Engineering Practices (IC-CSEP), College Park, Maryland, USA, October 10-11, 1996.

Contact Details:

Principal Investigator: Dr. Barbara Paech

Address: Fraunhofer-Institut für Experimentelles Software Engineering (IESE), Sauerwiesen 6, D-67661 Kaiserslautern, Rheinland-Pfalz, Germany

Telephone number: +49 6301 707 226

Telefax number: +49 6301 707 200

EMail: paech@iese.fhg.de
 

List of Members