Victor R. Basili and Koji Torii, Workshop Co-chairs
The First IWSED was held at Nara, Japan in October of 1993. For that conference the questionnaire and the workshop focused on the study of defect data and its uses, as collected by various organizations in projects and in experiments. At that workshop it was clear that even with our attempt to provide context around the data in terms of asking people to specify phase and process definitions, that software development in different companies was defined and implemented so differently that comparisons were impossible. A major part of the workshop was spent on articulating differences rather than similarities in terminology.
The second IWSED was held in Hiroshima, Japan on November 1994. Although the goal of this workshop was basically an the same as that of the first, the questionnaire was changed to reflect what had been learned form the first workshop. In addition to the questionnaire, interviews were done on Japanese companies to try to understand at least the current state of the practice in measurement data. A summary of the findings for Japanese companies, based upon differences with American companies was generated.
Major characteristics differences in the Japanese software industry are:
(A) Common Industry Practices:
(B) Data Collection and analysis practices:
The third IWSED was the first one held outside of Japan. It was held in College Park, Maryland in October 1995. There were 38 participants: 14 from the US, 10 from Japan, 7 from Germany, 2 from Italy, and 1 each from Canada, Finland, Norway, Spain, and Sweden. Although the participants of the first two workshops represented 4 to 5 countries, this time participants came from 9 countries.
The theme for the workshop was also expanded to the utilization of defect and cost data in process and risk management. There were four sessions (and therefore subgroups):
The consensus appears to be that there is very little data being used for risk management in any organization and that in some cases, risk management is considered part of project management. Reports of the various subgroups are contained in this proceedings.
We would like to add a note here that although language is a problem in all international conferences and workshops for non-native English speakers, it is especially problem for workshops were interactive discussion is the major format of the meeting. This has been a continuing problem with the workshops. We believe that the use of questionnaires prepared by the participant before hand, helps with this problem, since participants become familiar with the terminology.
Although we plan to continue the workshops in the future, it was decided not to hold the workshop internationally every year. One possible agenda is to hold the workshop locally each year and internationally every other year.
Once again, we would like to thank all the workshop participants
for their efforts and insights.
WWW page updated 01-Feb-96 by Jyrki Kontio