Systems Reengineering Patterns

EPSRC Grant: GR/M02491

Investigators:

Dr Ashley Lloyd, Management School, University of Edinburgh.

Prof. Rob Pooley, Computing & Electrical Engineering, Heriot-Watt University.

Dr Perdita Stevens, Division of Informatics, University of Edinburgh.

Researcher: Dr Rick Dewar, Division of Informatics, University of Edinburgh.

Background

The reengineering of legacy systems - by which we mean those that significantly resist modification and evolution to meet new and constantly changing business requirements - is widely recognised as one of the most significant challenges facing software engineers. The problem is: widespread, affecting all kinds of organisations; serious, as failure to reengineer can hamper an organisation's attempts to remain competitive; and persistent, as there seems no reason to be confident that today's new systems are not also tomorrow's legacy systems. We suspect:

that the main problem is not that the necessary expertise does not exist, but rather, that it is hard for software engineers to become expert;
that the diversity of the problem domain poses problems for conventional methodological approaches;
that an approach via systems reengineering patterns can help.

A systems reengineering pattern is a description of an expert solution to a common systems reengineering problem, including its name, context, and advantages and disadvantages. We are principally concerned with the problem of how reengineering should proceed, rather than with what the design of the reengineered artefact should be. The latter problem seems to be adequately addressed by existing techniques (not least, design patterns). A reengineering pattern embodies expertise about how to guide a reengineering project to a successful conclusion. Because this is not only or even principally a technical problem, the context of a reengineering pattern must be much broader than that of a design pattern. It includes business context as well as software context, and may even need to take into account factors such as the budgeting procedures of the organisation or the personalities of the managers whose support is needed.

Collaborators

The main collaborator on the project is BT, which is providing access for us to observe reengineering projects and identify & test patterns. However, as our work progresses, we will be looking for other companies to help develop and further validate our patterns.

Further Information

For more information about this work please refer to the group's web page at :
http://reengineering.ed.ac.uk.
Or contact Rick on 0131 650 5139 (email: rgd@dcs.ed.ac.uk).