A Technical History of the SEI

Software Technology Reference Guide
The Challenge: Effective Software Technology Adoption
Software technology adoption is a challenge in a field where the technology is constantly changing,
along with the needs of the adopters. Technology consists “not just of the technical artifacts
but the knowledge embedded in those artifacts and the knowledge required for their effective use”
[Foreman 1997, p. 44]. Technology users need knowledge that enables them to systematically
plan research and development (R&D), as well as perform technology insertion activities to meet
their organization’s current and future needs.
A Solution: Software Technology Reference Guide
The U.S. Air Force acquisition community tasked the SEI to create a reference document that
would provide the Air Force with greater understanding of software technologies to support its
R&D and adoption plans.
Members of the SEI, the Air Force, 53 and government contractors worked as a cooperative team to
produce the Software Technology Reference Guide (STRG), which was first published in 1997
[Foreman 1997]. In a rather novel approach, several government contractors 54 provided personnel
for several months to aid in the evolution of document concepts and to author the majority of the
technology descriptions. In the early phases of the project, the document was also referred to as
the Software Technology Roadmap and the Structured Survey of Software Technology.
The 1997 reference guide included then-current information on 60 technologies, each described in
four to six pages. The descriptions underwent rigorous review by nearly 50 experts in the community.
The guide emphasized software technologies that were important to the command, control,
communications, computers, and intelligence (C4I) area; however, much of the information could
be applied broadly. The information was relevant to any complex, large-scale, distributed, realtime,
software-intensive, embedded system. The major concerns for these systems are reliability,
availability, safety, security, performance, maintainability, and cost. In 1998, the STRG was
“reengineered,” becoming one of the first interactive, web-enabled reference guides, which significantly
increased its availability and impact.
The Consequence: Unbiased Information Used for Selecting Technology
The Software Technology Reference Guide provided common ground for contractors, researchers,
government program offices, and other software-related organizations to assess technology. The
information in the guide was encapsulated so that readers could rapidly make a preliminary decision
as to whether further study/examination of a technology for potential use was warranted. The
technology descriptions layered information so that readers could get a focused synopsis of the
technology and find subordinate technology descriptions and pointers to sources of more detailed
information, including the experience of others. In addition, the technology descriptions provided
53 Capt Mark Gerken and Elizabeth Kean, Rome Laboratory; Capt Gary Haines, AFMC SSSG; and
Maj David Luginbuhl, Air Force Office of Scientific Research [Foreman 1997].
54 Lockheed Martin (Michael Bray and William Mills); GTE (Darleen Sadoski); E-System (James
Shimp); Kaman Sciences (Edmond Van Doren); and TRW (Cory Vondrak) [Foreman 1997].
CMU/SEI-2016-SR-027 | SOFTWARE ENGINEERING INSTITUTE | CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY 211
Distribution Statement A: Approved for Public Release; Distribution is Unlimited.