Abstract Software migration projects are often bound either by time or cost or by both. If the project is bound by both time and cost, the user must sacrifice something else, usually the quality. The migration strategy depends on how the project is bound. Most migration projects are bound by time. The new system must be in operation by a given date, no matter what it costs. The project described here—a state employee payroll system—is bound by cost. It must remain within the budget, no matter how long it takes. The original costs were estimated based on the code size and the productivity measured in previous migration projects using three different approaches: conversion, redevelopment, and reimplementation. The conversion approach would have been the cheapest, but it had already been tried and failed. The redevelopment approach was considered to be out of the question due to the high costs. Thus, reimplementation remained as the only alternative. The costs of this approach were estimated using three different estimation methods and approved by the state government. The project has been in progress for 4 years, and until now, the estimated costs and actual costs are in the same order of magnitude: the costs have remained within budget. In fact, the costs are less than what was estimated with some methods. As this particular project is not bound by time, it is a good example of continuous migration.

This paper is an industrial case study of how a VisualAge application system on an IBM mainframe was reverse engineered into a system reference repository. The starting point was the code fragments generated by the VisualAge interactive development tool. The results of the reverse engineering process were a use case documentation, a module documentation and a system reference repository. In these documents, the names of the data and functions were extended to be more understandable. The process was in the end fully automated and took three months to implement. The resulting documentation is now being used as a basis for re-implementing the system in Java.

Abstract After outsourcing, issues can arise between the outsourcing organization and their third parties about fair payment. In a ceteris paribus situation, fair payment can be determined based on the differences made by the third parties. However, when information technology development is (partly) outsourced to third parties, often, not only does the supplier change, but the development process is also changed. This change of development process alone influences important software metrics, such as time to market, productivity, costs, size, and quality, exactly the metrics that are often used to establish payments. Quantifying the influence of the development process redesign is therefore vital to make a fair assessment of the changes truly caused by the supplier, and thus realistic payment. In this paper, the influence of the change in the development process on important key performance indicators is quantified using simulation techniques. We use discrete event simulation to analyze the effect on time to market. The techniques we use are illustrated and validated by applying them in a real‐world situation. The techniques can be used to estimate the influence of the business process change both before outsourcing and after the outsourcing has been decided. Our case study helped the organization in their outsourcing by adapting its proposed development process so that the balance between a more formal process and time to market became more in line with their demands. Although the specific numbers will be different per company, other organizations can apply the general principle. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Much progress has been achieved in defining methods, techniques, and tools for software architecture reconstruction (SAR). However, less progress has been achieved in constructing reasoning frameworks from existing systems that support organizations in architecture analysis and design decisions. These reasoning frameworks are necessary, for example, to assemble existing components and deploy them in new system configurations. We propose a model-centric approach where this kind of reasoning is driven by the analysis of quality attribute scenarios. The scenarios and the related quality attribute models guide the SAR effort by focusing on the elicitation of model relevant artifacts. The approach further drives the model construction towards the analytical support of What If scenarios that explore responses stimulated by new requirements, such as new deployments of existing components. The paper provides two real-world case studies. The first case study introduces the model-centric reconstruction approach in the context of a large satellite tracking system. The second case study provides the construction of a time performance model for an existing embedded system in the automotive industry. The model allows us to perform cost-efficient predictions of component assemblies in new customer configurations. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

There are many goals for outsourcing information technology: for instance, cost reduction, speed to market, quality improvement, or new business opportunities. Based on our real-world experience in advising organizations with goal-driven outsourcing deals, we identified the most prominent quantitative input needed to close such deals. These comprise what we named the five executive issues enabling rational decision making. They concern cost, duration, risk, return, and financing aspects of outsourcing. They add an important quantitative financial/economic dimension to the decision making process. Based on inferred outcomes for the five executive issues, we address the easily overlooked aspects of selecting partners, contracting, monitoring progress, and acceptance and delivery conditions for contracts.

Grammarware comprises grammars and all grammar-dependent software. The termgrammaris meant here in the sense of all established grammar formalisms and grammar notations including context-free grammars, class dictionaries, and XML schemas as well as some forms of tree and graph grammars. The termgrammar-dependent softwarerefers to all software that involves grammar knowledge in an essential manner. Archetypal examples of grammar-dependent software are parsers, program converters, and XML document processors. Despite the pervasive role of grammars in software systems, the engineering aspects of grammarware are insufficiently understood. We lay out an agenda that is meant to promote research on increasing the productivity of grammarware development and on improving the quality of grammarware. To this end, we identify the problems with the current grammarware practices, the barriers that currently hamper research, and the promises of an engineering discipline for grammarware, its principles, and the research challenges that have to be addressed.

Abstract We describe a method to migrate multiple instances of a successful single information system to a product line. The deployed product line is able to deal with the variants evolved over time in a cost‐effective manner. We proposed and used federated architectures that partition the software into so‐called genericity layers. We argue that federated architectures are at the heart of product lines, and we provide compelling arguments as to why federated architectures are a sound weapon in today's corporate strategy: they enable smooth enterprise integration and rapid change. We support our arguments with a real‐world case: we successfully migrated a large global transaction and settlement system with many site‐specific variations to a product line with a federated architecture. Moreover, we measured the success rate of this architectural modification effort by showing that the annual direct cost savings are of the order of millions of dollars during the deployment of the product line. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Abstract We propose an approach to the construction of grammars forexistinglanguages. The main characteristic of the approach is that the grammars are not constructed from scratch but they are rather recovered by extracting them from language references, compilers and other artifacts. We provide a structured process to recover grammars including the adaptation of raw extracted grammars and the derivation of parsers. The process is applicable to possibly all existing languages for which business critical applications exist. We illustrate the approach with a non‐trivial case study. Using our process and some basic tools, we constructed in a few weeks a complete and correct VS COBOL II grammar specification for IBM mainframes. In addition, we constructed a parser for VS COBOL II, and were the first to publish a (Web‐enabled) grammar specification so that others can use this result to construct their own grammar‐based tools for VS COBOL II or derivatives. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Software architecture is important for large systems in which it is the main means for among other things, controlling complexity. Current ideas on software architectures were not available more than ten years ago. Software developed at that time has been deteriorating from an architectural point of view over the years, as a result of adaptations made in the software because of changing system requirements. Parts of the old software are nevertheless still being used in new product lines. To make changes in that software, like adding features, it is imperative to first adapt the software to accommodate those changes. Architecture improvement of existing software is therefore becoming more and more important. The paper describes a two-phase process for software architecture improvement, which is the synthesis of two research areas: the architecture visualisation and analysis area of Philips Research, and the transformation engines and renovation factories area of the University of Amsterdam. Software architecture transformation plays an important role, and is to our knowledge a new research topic. Phase one of the process is based on Relation Partition Algebra (RPA). By lifting the information to higher levels of abstraction and calculating metrics over the system, all kinds of quality aspects can be investigated. Phase two is based on formal transformation techniques on abstract syntax trees. The software architecture improvement process allows for a fast feedback loop on results, without the need to deal with the complete software and without any interference with the normal development process.

When a compiler is designed carefully, it is possible to extract its grammar. We reengineer the extracted grammar to one that is geared towards reengineering. From this reengineering grammar we generate an architecture called a software renovation factory. This includes: generic analysis and transformation functionality and a native pattern language using the concrete syntax of the language for which the renovation is necessary. Moreover, we generate the grammar in HTML format so that reengineers can quickly understand the language. We applied our approach successfully to an exceptionally complex and large proprietary language. Our approach enables rapid development of software renovation factories. We believe that our approach can partly solve the lack of Year 2000 tool support for many languages.

Discusses tools that aid in the development, assessment and reengineering of language descriptions (i.e. syntactic descriptions of a language). We develop assessment tools that give an indication as to what is wrong with an existing language description, and give hints towards its correction. From a correct and complete language description, it is possible to generate a parser, a manual and online documentation. The parser is geared towards reengineering purposes, but is also used to parse the examples that are contained in the documentation. The reengineered language description is a basic ingredient for a reengineering factory that can manipulate this language. The described tool support can also be used to develop a language standard without syntax errors in the language description and its code examples.