Domain Analysis Guidebook December 1998

ii Foreword This document is a product of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Office of Safety and Mission Assurance (OSMA) Software Program, an agency-wide program designed to address and mitigate software-related risk within NASA programs. The goals and strategies of this program are traceable to the NASA Strategic Plan, the NASA Software Strategic Plan, and the OSMA Strategic Plan. This guidebook presents a method of performing experience domain analysis. The purpose of the guidebook is to facilitate the reader in characterizing two given development environments, applying domain analysis to model each, and then applying an evaluation process, based upon the Goal/Metric/Paradigm, to transfer a given development technology from one of the environments to the other. This guidebook describes this process and gives an example of its use within NASA. The present document is one element of the set of standards, guidebooks, and reports produced in support of the OSMA Software Program. The principal report authors were Carolyn Seaman is now with the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. The process described in this document is also based upon the work of Rose Pajerski (Fraunhofer Center – Maryland). Preliminary efforts on understanding experience application domains were performed by Frank McGarry (Computer Sciences Corporation) and Lionel Briand (Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering). We appreciate the help of David Petri (NASA/JSC) for allowing us to develop this model with the help of his Rapid Development Laboratory. We greatly acknowledge the comments from Sira Vegas and Maurizio Morisio, who read an earlier draft of this report.