Happy Holidays, Everyone!

I hope your lives were not seriously impacted by the September 11 tragedy, and that things are looking up for you for a happier 2002.

That has been the case for us here at the USC Center for Software Engineering.  We are starting some major new initiatives to apply and extend our research and methods to the NASA High Dependability Computing Initiative and the US Army/DARPA Future Combat Systems program.  We have also had an exciting collaboration with our Affiliates to develop COSYSMO, a model for estimating system engineering costs for software-intensive systems, and in extending our research on architectures for mobile computing.  We'll present and demonstrate our latest results at our Annual Research Review Monday, March 11, at the Davidson Conference Center on the USC campus.

Our associated Executive Workshop (Tuesday, March 12 through 1130am Thursday, March 14) will focus on Agile Methods.  We have been collaborating with some of the leaders in the Agile Methods community, particularly Alistair Cockburn and Jim Highsmith, on how to assess the applicability of agile methods to given project situations, and on how best to integrate agile and more plan-driven methods.

Below is a Call for Participation for the Workshop.  It also links to some recent papers that summarize the assessments to date.  I believe that this will be a highly timely, significant, and valuable Workshop for all of our Affiliates.  I hope that you’ll be able to participate in it with us.  If you have potential panelists with significant experience to contribute, please let me know.

Best regards,

Barry

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