Founder & Chairman Emeritus
SofTech, Inc
Lecturer, EECS Department, MIT
1954 Airborne Fire-Control Servomechanisms Lab, MIT
Gestalt Programming Automatic Factory example
First free-hand computer input
1959 APT Numerical Control Language ANSI/ISO Standard
1960s MIT Computer-Aided Design Project Elect. Systems. Lab.
First Software Engineering language, tools, course (1968)
First 3D Display hardware and display file downloading
1969 SofTech, Inc. founded NASDAQ in 1981
1972 VMM Design of Flexible Manufacturing System for Cincinnati Milacron
"Fire-walls", 12 Languages, Non-stop, triple-redundant data recovery, hierarchic CNC control
Triggered concepts for "Architecture Method" for the
1973
AFCAM Project Boeing & SofTech
First use of Structured Analysis
1970s Commercial use of SADT Standard for all ITT-Europe phones
ICAM Project SofTech Prime, DoD-wide
Full SADT in Part 1 of contract Architecture of Manufacturing
Characterization & Coding thru OBJECT MODEL
Geometric Modeling, Process Planning, etc. with CAM-I
Operational SW Concept (OSC), etc. Real-time Flight Design
1980s IDEF0,l ,2 in ICAM IDEF0 now FIPS Pub. #183
Active IDEF Users Group w IEEE Stds Comm on IDEFs for ISO
1990s Foundations of RSA/SADT/IDEF0
"New Look" at original SA plus new insights
The Results: Books, tools, courses, collaborations.
SADT/IDEF0 provides an integrated approach to
· Performing systems analysis and design at all levels for systems comprising people, machines, materials, computers, and information of all varieties the entire enterprise· Producing documentation concurrent with development · Communicating by analysts, designers, users, managers
· Allowing coalition consensus to be achieved not by agreeing to disagree, but by common shared understanding
· Ensuring quality and configuration control via continuous review and approval
· Managing large and complex projects using quantitative and qualitative measures of progress
For teams to work effectively there must be
· Clear divisions of the problem· Well-defined interfaces · A way to integrate and interrelate their work
· A common language for communication
· Precise records of decisions
· Visibility
People fulfill various roles in the process:
· Experts with deep domain knowledge in technical, management, marketing, and business areas.· Authors who are trained to interview experts and express the results in wellstructured models of the subject matter. · Readers, who are trained in the reading rules for the models, including how to make terse comments on their correctness and effectiveness in communicating the subject matter. (Readers may be other authors, or experts, managers, and executives.)
· Technical and Management Review Committees spanning the full range of required expertise and responsibility to monitor (as Readers) and approve project progress and results.
· Project Librarian who circulates Reader Kits in the Reader/ Author Cycle, and maintains the project archives of all results and decisions.
Three Formal Sayings define the semantics of the SA Language:
The Model Definition:M models A to the extent that M correctly answers questions about A.The most basic model is a proper name for A.
The Structured Analysis Maxim:Everything worth saying
About anything worth saying something about
Must be expressed in six-or-fewer pieces.
The pieces are the Structured Analysis Box:
with the Formal Saying: (for its semantics)Under ¯ ControlInput ® is transformed into ® Output
by the Ý Mechanism which augments the inherited means