The Initiative KommSE focuses on the communication about software systems during industrial development and maintenance of complex systems.
Especially if division of labor and geographical distribution of teams plays a role in software development, two major problems become apparent: The organization of the development process is getting a more and more complex task. Furthermore the contribution of different teams to a complex software system requires intensive and efficient communication between all participants.
While research of the development process is covered by software engineering, the problem of communication about its object - the complex system - seems to have no relevance in the academic community. By expressing the demand for solutions for the problem, the industry can stimulate the academic community to start and enforce research in this domain.
For this reason we have started the initiative "Communication about software systems" in 2003. The aim is to find supporters to tackle the problems by sharing their experience, increasing the awareness of this problem in public and stimulating the search for solutions.
In their Position Statements the supporters of the initiative show their point of view of the communication problem, talk about their experiences and possibly suggest activities which may improve the situation. The position statements are a means to increase the awareness of the relevance of this problem and a reference for all future activities of the initiative.
To get further information about the initiative, please contact Bernhard Gröne
The research group "Modeling of software-intensive systems"
at the Hasso-Plattner-Institute for Software systems
engineering under the direction of Prof. Dr.-Ing. Siegfried Wendt focuses on presentation
and communication of knowledge about software-intensive systems. The group is convicted that
efficient communication about complex systems is not only necessary but practicable. This is a
result of many long-term projects with Siemens and SAP
(here the knowledge about the R/3 basis system has been captured and processed).
The aspect of communication therefore is an inherent part of the curriculum of software systems
engineering at the Hasso-Plattner-Institute.