ICSE97 Tutorial -- Defining Families: The Commonality Analysis

A tutorial on Commonality Analysis, part of the FAST process, was given at the International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), May 19, 1997.

A recent trend in both the software engineering research and industrial communities has been to seek ways to systematically engineer software domains. One approach is to develop families of software and to invest in facilities for rapidly producing family members. This tutorial describes the commonality analysis process, a systematic approach to analyzing families. The result of the analysis forms the basis for designing reusable assets to rapidly produce family members. This in-depth course will teach the participants the principles underlying the approach and will give them a chance to perform a practice commonality analysis guided by experienced users of the process.

The course is designed to teach participants how to perform a commonality analysis. The participants gain an understanding of:

• the benefits of performing a commonality analysis,
• how and where the results may be used,
• who should participate in a commonality analysis,
• the phases of the analysis and the motivation for each phase, and
• the form of the commonality analysis document.

Potential participants should have some experience in the practice or management of software development, but no assumptions are made about that experience.

Outline of Topics:

1. Introduction
2. Overview of FAST
   1. FAST Vision and Approach
   2. Economic Model
   3. Application Engineering
   4. Domain Engineering
   5. Review
3. Commonality Analysis
   1. Organizing Principles
   2. Sections of Document
4. Commonality Analysis Process
   1. Roles
   2. Sessions
   3. Social Approach
5. Introduction to Application Engineering
6. Practical Exercise in Commonality Analysis

• Lecture Notes
• Supporting Material (128K postscript)
• Review Questions for Commonality Analyses (60K postscript)

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