A Technical History of the SEI

government needs, and guidance for transitioning open systems concepts into practice. The Navy
approached the SEI to assist with both elements. The SEI participated on the IEEE POSIX standards
working groups, contributing to the development of open systems standards such that government
requirements were accommodated. In addition, the SEI developed a comprehensive
course―the first of its kind―to educate government professionals on the concepts and practices
of open systems engineering. Course development started in 1993, with an initial delivery in
1994. When the DoD Open Systems Joint Task Force (OS-JTF) was formed in 1995, one of its
first activities was to attend the SEI course. Since then, the SEI has delivered the course to all
three U.S. DoD services; several U.S. federal agencies, such as the GAO, and defense organizations
in Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. Today, open systems and
open system concepts are still used in defense systems, and the SEI executive-level course is still
delivered in response to customer demand.
Aiding Understanding of Expanding Technology
As the field of software engineering matured in the 1990s, SEI customers increasingly needed to
comprehend and apply the ever-expanding array of software engineering concepts, methods,
tools, and techniques. The SEI responded to a request from the Air Force acquisition community
to develop the Software Technology Reference Guide (STRG), which provided the Air Force with
an accessible and reliable source for basic information on a wide variety of technologies.
A further trend in the early 1990s was an emerging interest in reengineering within the SEI customer
base. Faced with declining budgets and a significant investment in existing software systems,
government programs recognized the need to leverage legacy software, rather than to develop
new software from scratch, as they tried to meet changing mission needs and accommodate
newer technologies. To compound the problem, these legacy systems were often inadequately
documented and poorly structured. Further, there was an unrealistic expectation that emerging
technology would allow for a straightforward, automated approach to reengineering these legacy
systems. The SEI started a reengineering effort to assist its customers in understanding the issues
and realities of re-engineering legacy assets and migrating these into new systems. In collaborating
with government programs, the SEI developed methods, such as Options Analysis for Reengineering
(OAR), which assists programs in more effectively identifying and mining legacy software
components. Because of the strength and quality of OAR, it has had further impact as the
basis for the key SEI approach for service-oriented systems, the SOA Migration, Adoption, and
Reuse Technique (SMART), discussed in Building and Fielding Interoperating Systems.
Managing and Engineering COTS-Based Systems
In 1994, a Defense Science Board (DSB) study on the use of commercial products (also referred
to as commercial off-the-shelf, or COTS, products) within defense systems made strong recommendations
for the use of COTS products [DSB 1994]. The study provided the impetus for the
SEI to create the COTS-Based Systems (CBS) initiative, which focused on understanding the specific
needs within the defense community. The initiative built on the expertise from the CASE environments
work, which was exploring the use of COTS products in software engineering environments.
Over the next few years, the SEI led and actively contributed to an international
community that developed key concepts, methods, and practices for managing and engineering
systems that were built using a variety of COTS products. The SEI developed an integrated set of
training courses to increase the government’s awareness, understanding, and skills. These courses
CMU/SEI-2016-SR-027 | SOFTWARE ENGINEERING INSTITUTE | CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY 200
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