A Technical History of the SEI

3. leveraging of other SEI work from related technical areas and work from the reengineering
community to provide support for DoD programs [Kazman 1999]. This work included the areas
of architecture reconstruction and architecture models for reengineering [Kazman 1998].
The Consequence: Effective Decision Making About Reengineering
The Army Training Support Center (ASTC), FAA, and Joint Logistics Center (JLC), among other
organizations, used SEI support for their reengineering programs. At ATSC, a model was implemented
for identifying and providing guidance for making reengineering decisions at key points
in the program lifecycle. The ATSC used the migration framework as a framework for making decisions
on migration to a family of new systems, and the National Security Agency used it as a basis
for migrating to a set of reengineering tools and methods. The JLC work resulted in guidance
for choosing methods and technology that was used widely within the DoD community. The effort
with FAA resulted in a series of recommendations that were followed rigorously in the implementation
of the currently operational FAA in-flight system.
The SEI Contribution
The SEI researchers identified broad trends and needs in reengineering for the DoD. As a result of
the frameworks that were developed, the SEI established credibility and was invited to participate
in leadership roles in the broader research community. The SEI focused on several areas that were
of direct importance to the DoD, such as developing a migration model and a model for program
understanding. A clearinghouse of reengineering information was developed and distributed on
the SEI website in order to make it available for DoD programs. The SEI provided direct support
for the DoD and other federal government programs, including the FAA, Army ATSC, JLC, and
NSA.
DoD organizations recognized the leadership role of the SEI in reengineering and migration of
legacy assets. The DoD JLC requested SEI technical participation on its Software Reuse Committee.
The SEI project leader was invited to lead workshops on software reengineering challenges
for the DoD and to participate in an updated version of the DoD software reengineering handbook.
The SEI technical papers contributed to recognition of SEI researchers as leaders in the field; SEI
staff members presented papers, workshops and tutorials at conferences in the area. They were
also elected to leadership positions in conferences including IWPC, STEP and ICSM.
The Reengineering Center formalized the SEI’s role as a link between DoD needs, other SEI research,
and the external research community. It established mechanisms that would be replicated
in other areas. The approach of identifying open research challenges, becoming leaders within a
specific research community, serving as a broker between DoD needs and the research community,
identifying specific technical gaps for SEI research, and providing direct support to selected
programs, is not unique to the reengineering work. This approach has evolved to become standard
in most current SEI research projects and has been adopted by SEI technical projects as well.
References
[Arnold 1993] Arnold, Robert S. Software Reengineering. IEEE Computer Society Press, 1993
(ISBN 0818632720).
CMU/SEI-2016-SR-027 | SOFTWARE ENGINEERING INSTITUTE | CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY 214
Distribution Statement A: Approved for Public Release; Distribution is Unlimited.