Neil Ernst

Software Engineering Institute

Publications by Neil Ernst

"SHORT"er Reasoning About Larger Requirements Models

September 08, 2017 • Conference Paper

George Mathew (North Carolina State University)Tim Menzies (North Carolina State University)Neil Ernst

SHORT is a tool to simplify reasoning about requirements engineering (RE) models by exploiting key decisions within them, evaluated on eight complex RE models.
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What to Fix? Distinguishing Between Design and Non-design Rules in Automated Tools

April 07, 2017 • Conference Paper

Neil Ernst Stephany Bellomo Ipek Ozkaya

This paper describes an empirical study using a structured categorization approach to manually classify 466 software quality rules from three industry tools.
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Using Stakeholder Preferences to Make Better Architecture Decisions

April 07, 2017 • Conference Paper

Neil Ernst John Klein George Mathew (North Carolina State University)

This paper describes a method to collect stakeholder preferences about architecture options and uses automated optimization to identify important architecture decisions.
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Measure It? Manage It? Ignore It? Software Practitioners and Technical Debt

November 28, 2016 • Presentation

Neil Ernst Stephany Bellomo Ipek Ozkaya

This presentation on measuring and managing technical debt was given at the 49th CREST Open Workshop Software Architecture and Technical Debt in November 2016.
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Creating Software Modernization Roadmaps: The Architecture Options Workshop

April 08, 2016 • Conference Paper

Neil Ernst Mary Popeck Felix Bachmann

This paper introduces the Architecture Options Workshop, which addresses the problems of moving from identified system risks to potential design options.
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Incremental Life Cycle Assurance of Safety-Critical Systems

March 16, 2016 • Conference Paper

Julien Delange Peter H. Feiler Neil Ernst

ALISA integrates requirements specification, architecture models, verification techniques, and assurance case traceability to incrementally build systems that satisfy requirements.
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Quality Attribute Refinement and Allocation

March 08, 2016 • Podcast

Neil Ernst

Dr. Neil Ernst discusses industry practices such as slicing and ratcheting used to develop business capabilities and suggests approaches to enable large-scale iteration.
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A Field Study of Technical Debt

October 15, 2015 • Podcast

Neil Ernst

In this podcast, Dr. Neil Ernst discusses the findings of a recent field study to assess the state of the practice and current thinking regarding technical debt and guide the development of a technical debt timeline.
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Measure It? Manage It? Ignore It? Software Practitioners and Technical Debt

August 30, 2015 • Conference Paper

Neil Ernst Stephany Bellomo Ipek Ozkaya

This paper reports on a survey of 1,831 software engineers and architects, and follow-up interviews of seven software engineers, to determine the most important sources of technical debt.
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Application-Specific Evaluation of No SQL Databases

July 01, 2015 • Conference Paper

John Klein Ian Gorton Neil Ernst

This paper reports on the selection of a NoSQL database for use in an Electronic Healthcare Record system being developed by a large healthcare provider.
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Enabling Incremental Iterative Development at Scale: Quality Attribute Refinement and Allocation in Practice

June 04, 2015 • Technical Report

Neil Ernst Stephany Bellomo Robert Nord

This report describes industry practices used to develop business capabilities and suggests approaches to enable large-scale iterative development, or agile at scale.
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Improving Quality Using Architecture Fault Analysis with Confidence Arguments

March 10, 2015 • Technical Report

Peter H. Feiler Charles B. Weinstock John B. Goodenough

The case study shows that by combining an analytical approach with confidence maps, we can present a structured argument that system requirements have been met and problems in the design have been addressed adequately.
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Performance Evaluation of NoSQL Databases: A Case Study

February 01, 2015 • Conference Paper

John Klein Ian Gorton Neil Ernst

This paper presents a method and the results of a study that selected among three NoSQL databases for a large, distributed healthcare organization.
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Evolutionary Improvements of Cross-Cutting Concerns: Performance in Practice

October 30, 2014 • Conference Paper

Stephany Bellomo Neil Ernst Robert Nord

This paper describes two key challenges of incrementally evolving cross-cutting concerns such as performance during incremental software development.
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Toward Design Decisions to Enable Deployability: Empirical Study of Three Projects Reaching for the Continuous Delivery Holy Grail

June 23, 2014 • Conference Paper

Stephany Bellomo Neil Ernst Robert Nord

This paper summarizes three project teams' deployability goals and the architectural decisions they made to enable deployability while practicing continuous delivery.
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Understanding the Role of Constraints on Architecturally Significant Requirements

July 16, 2013 • Conference Paper

Neil Ernst Ipek Ozkaya Robert Nord

This paper describes a case study conducted to identify architecturally significant requirements that were impacted by tool selection.
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