Imperial College - Department of Computing - Distributed Software Engineering Section

Welcome to the FEAST/1 Project Summary Page

FEAST/1

Feedback, Evolution And Software Technology

Investigators | Industrial Collaborators | Publications | Contact Information

Note that FEAST/1 terminated in September 1998. A continuation project FEAST/2 commenced on 1st April 1999. Its web pages, and publications, are accesible from http://www.cs.mdx.ac.uk/staffpages/mml/feast2

Click here for a brief introduction to the FEAST Hypothesis and Projects

Funding

EPSRC

Principal Investigator

Prof. Manny Lehman, m.lehman@mdx.ac.uk

Co-investigators

Prof. Berc Rustem, Imperial College, br@doc.ic.ac.uk Prof. Vic Stenning, Imperial College, vs6@doc.ic.ac.uk

Senior Visiting Fellows

Prof. Wladyslaw M. Turski, Faculty of Math., Inform. and Mech., Warsaw University, wmt@mimuw.edu.pl Prof. Dewayne E. Perry, Electrical and Computer Engineering & Computer Science College of Engineering & College of Natural Sciences, The University of Texas at Austin, perry@ece.utexas.edu

Industrial Collaborators

  • ICL plc
  • Logica plc
  • Matra-BAe plc
  • MoD - DERA

    • Associate Collaborator

  • Lucent Technologies

    • Research Associate

    Dr. Paul Wernick, formerly with Imperial College, now with University of Hertfordshire, Dept. of Computer Science, Hertfordshire, p.d.wernick@herts.ac.uk

    Research Assistant

    Juan F. Ramil, Imperial College, ramil@doc.ic.ac.uk

    The Project

    Based on an observation first made in 1971, the FEAST/1 project was set up to explore a hypothesis that states:

    Real world software evolution processes constitute multi level, multi loop, multi agent feedback systems and must, in general, be treated as such to achieve significant process improvement for other than the most primitive processes.

    In a two year investigation terminating in Sept. 1998 the project explored this hypothesis by developing and analysing black box models of system and process evolution metrics obtained from the industrial collaborators. System dynamics models were also developed by a top-down procedure to identify critical feedback loops and assess their impact.

    The project has shown the presence of feedback, demonstrated its impact and, in particular, indicated that a significant part of the system dynamics displayed by the various observable trends has its origin in outer loop feedback mechanisms, involving user, organisational and management domains. The results support the laws of software evolution developed over the last 25 years.

    Duration

    October 1996 to September 1998

    Case for Support

    Click here

    Final Reports

    Summary
    Full [PDF]
    SVF_1996/7 [PDF]
    SVF_1998/9 [PDF]

    Contact Information

    Prof. Manny Lehman, m.lehman@mdx.ac.uk
    +44 (0)20 7594 8214 Fax: +44 (0)20 7594 8215 or +44 (0)20 7581 8024

    Mr. Juan F. Ramil, ramil@doc.ic.ac.uk
    +44 (0)20 7594 8216 Fax: +44 (0)20 7594 8215 or +44 (0)20 7581 8024

    Postal address for all the above

    Department of Computing, Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine,
    180 Queen's Gate, London SW7 2BZ, UK.

    Investigators | Industrial Collaborators | Publications | Contact Information