TRW’s SEE sage

Abstract

Over the past decade, software productivity has been a major concern at TRW and a number of efforts to improve productivity have been undertaken. The development of Software Engineering Environments (SEEs) and their use on large projects has been central to the software productivity strategy. Those efforts include the Software Productivity Program which started in the early 1980s and constitute the first major corporate effort towards building a SEE for use by large-scale projects. The efforts also included the Project Master Database (PMDB) investigations, the Distributed Computing Design System (DCDS), and support in the design and implementation of the Common APSE Interface Set (CAIS). This paper provides a historical and conceptual perspective on the key internal efforts in support of building and evaluating SEEs which occurred in the last decade and how the lessons learned were incorporated into a concept of operation for the next generation SEEs.