Current design theory, methods, notations, tools, and practices and the acquisition methods that support them are inadequate to design ULS systems effectively.

This research area broadens the traditional technology-centric definition of design to include people and organizations; social, cognitive, and economic considerations; and design structures such as design rules and government policies. It involves research in support of designing ULS systems from all of these points of view and at many levels of abstraction, from the hardware to the software to the people and organizations in which they work.

Relevant Glossary Terms

Recommended Reading

Baldwin, C. & Clark, K. Design Rules: The Power of Modularity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999.

Boehm, B. W. Software Engineering Economics. Prentice Hall, 1981.

Boehm, B. W. & Sullivan, K. “Software Economics: A Roadmap.” The Future of Software Engineering. Association for Computing Machinery, 2000.

Coase, R. H. “The Nature of the Firm.” Readings in Price Theory. Stigler and Boulding (eds.). Chicago, IL: R. D. Irwin, 1952.

Griswold, W. G.; Sullivan, K.; Song, Y.; Shonle, M.; Tewari, N.; Cai, Y.; & Rajan, H. “Modular Software Design with Crosscutting Interfaces.” IEEE Software 23, 1 (January/February, 2006): 51-60.

Jackson, D. Software Abstractions: Logic, Language, and Analysis. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006.

Parnas, D. L. “On the Criteria for Decomposing Systems into Modules.” Communications of the ACM 15, 12 (December 1972):1053–1058.

Simon, H. A. “The Architecture of Complexity,” 192-229. The Sciences of the Artificial. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1969.

Sullivan, K. J.; Chalasani, P.; Jha, S.; & Sazawal, V. “Software Design as an Investment Activity: A Real Options Perspective.” Real Options and Business Strategy: Applications to Decision Making. L. Trigeorgis (ed.). Risk Books, 1999.

Sullivan, K.; Griswold, W. G.; Cai, Y; & Hallen, B. “The Structure and Value of Modularity in Software Design,” 98-101. Proceedings of the 8th European Software Engineering Conference, held jointly with the 9th ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Foundations of Software Engineering, 2001.

Latest ULS Systems News

Read Greg Goth's May 2008 IEEE Software article: "Ultralarge Systems: Redefining Software Engineering?"