TXT (Italy), CCC (Finland), CEFRIEL
(Italy), GEC Marconi Avionics (Great Britain), Nokia
Mobile Phones (Finland), Objectif Technologie
(France), QSS (Great Britain), Sextant Avionique
(France).
Project Overview
Summary and Main Objectives
Most industrial software-intensive systems,
taken from different application fields, from avionics to plant automation or consumer
electronics, bear during their life an unavoidable requirements changing. Requirement
changes, occurring at any phase of the software-intensive system lifecycle, have strong
impacts on technical and organisational aspects of the software project, require relevant
efforts to be accomplished and can cause relevant economic losses to organisations in
charge of these development.
Nowadays major problem areas in software
development and production, causing the greatest concerns to software developers, are the
requirement specification and the management of customer requirements. These concerns are
mainly focused upon the interface between customer and supplier, understanding the
customers requirements and managing the changing requirements during the software
production process.
Requirement changes acquire particular
relevance in software procurement, for both procurer and supplier (respectively system
end-users and IT companies). Procurers need means to achieve effective management of
contractual practices, by quantifying clauses in the contract and then assessing their
accomplishment on supply. Currently, software procurement is based on a qualitative
clauses definition, with obvious drawbacks for both players involved. Suppliers have in
requirement management the key factor for customer management and business success,
because it increases the customer perception of satisfactory supplies. But they still lack
in ability to estimate and control supply costs and this is often the main reason of
supply flops.
The management of requirement changes is
therefore a key factor for successful cost-effective software development.
Starting from the awareness of this
problem, the SACHER consortium proposes, within this project, an innovative technology
solution. In fact, the overall objectives of the SACHER project are:
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to increase the efficiency of requirement change
management in software-intensive systems development and maintenance for IT companies,
reducing related costs and times of at least 30%.
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to increase the effectiveness of cost estimation in
software contract definition for IT companies of at least 30%, avoiding supply flops and
allowing a more competitive pricing policy with customers.
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to define and support an innovative approach to contract
definition in software procurement, increasing the procurer confidence in software
acceptance and maintainability, and giving the supplier a competitive advantage in
customer orientation.
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Expected results
The SACHER project will
pursue its objectives by defining an innovative technology, based on software cost
sensitivity analysis, for managing requirement changes in software systems. Project
results will be:
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the SACHER toolset, supporting
requirement change management in software development and maintenance, through impact
analysis, cost evaluation and cost sensitivity analysis
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the SACHER methodology (with a
guideline handbook), positioning the SACHER requirement management within a software
process viewpoint and introducing a modern software procurement approach based on software
cost sensitivity, bringing unambiguous product acceptance specifications to the customer
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the database of measurements, gathered
through the user pilot experiments and constituting the flexible knowledge-base for cost
evaluation within the SACHER toolset
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The SACHER technology
will support the requirement management and software procurement. It could be used by
suppliers to increase their capability on software procurement and by procurers to
increase their control on supply. It also will support the assessment of software quality,
in terms of its cost sensitivity, this parameter corresponding directly to its
maintainability (changeability), given by an estimation of costs and time needed to
accomplish a change request.
Read more about the SACHER approach: