CS 851: FORENSIC SOFTWARE ENGINEERING

FALL 2002

John C. Knight with Kimberly S. Hanks
Department of Computer Science



Course Syllabus





[August] [September] [October] [November] [December]


Wed, Aug 28
  • Introduction
  • Administrative Details
Mon, Sept 2
  • Reading: familiarize yourselves with the RISKS forum
  • Reading: look ahead and start (Johnson, Leveson, Perrow)
  • Guam crash presentation and discussion
Wed, Sept 4
  • Reading: Johnson
  • What is forensic software engineering?
Mon, Sept 9
  • Reading: Leveson ch.7
  • Reading: Perrow intro
  • What is a system?
  • What is a normal accident?
  • Software development as a system and software artifacts as components of greater systems
Wed, Sept 11
  • Reading: Perrow ch.1, ch.2
  • Analogies between systems from different industries
  • Given Guam and TMI, can we hypothesize some failure paradigms?
Mon, Sept 16
  • Reading: Perrow ch.3, Parnas
  • System characterization: what kinds of faults and failures are avoidable?
  • How does this direct the activity of forensic SE?
  • How does this affect what systems we choose to build in the first place?
Wed, Sept 18
  • Reading: Perrow ch.5, ch.6
  • Air and marine transport: systematic similarities, differences?
  • Additions to failure paradigms?
  • Software and these systems
  • Where progress is being made and where it's harder to make it
Mon, Sept 23
  • Reading: Perrow ch.9
  • Taking stock: Is there a mandate? What is it?
Wed, Sept 25
  • Reading: Strauch
  • Reading: Perrow postscript (not the afterword!)
  • Strauch says Perrow was half right. Which half? Did he call Y2K correctly? What do we know now that we didn't know then?
Mon, Sept 30
  • Reading: Petroski introduction, ch.2, ch.3
  • What is a paradigm for Petroski?
  • What is its value?
  • Two paradigms and examples.
Wed, Oct 2
  • Reading: Petroski ch.4, ch.5, ch.6
  • Three more paradigms.
  • Do we find such patterns in the development or use of software?
Mon, Oct 14
  • Reading: Petroski ch.7, ch.8
  • Another paradigm.
  • Judgment.
Wed, Oct 16
  • Reading: Petroski ch.9, ch.10, ch.11
  • A final paradigm.
  • Taking stock. What's the mandate for bridge building, and can it be generalized?
  • How might we apply it to the development of complex systems and their software?
Fri, Oct 18
  • Reading: Reason, chapters 1 and 2
  • Intro to human error
  • Role in causing disasters
Mon, Oct 21
  • Reading: Reason, chapter 3
  • A model of error: performance levels and error types
  • What is the value of this classification?
Wed, Oct 23
  • Reading: Reason, chapter 4
  • Cognitive underspecification
  • Incomplete calling information to uniquely identify stored knowledge
  • (vs.) Incomplete stored knowledge
  • What kinds of errors derive from underspecification?
Mon, Oct 28
  • Reading: Reason, chapter 7
  • Contribution of cognitive machinery to latent vs. active error
  • Kinds of disasters that result
Wed, Oct 30
  • Reading: Reason, chapter 8
  • Applying understanding of human error to risk reduction
Mon, Nov 4
  • Reading: Leveson (Safeware), chapters 5 and 6
  • Human error, situational awareness, and safety-critical automation
Wed, Nov 6
  • Reading: Kletz, chapters 1, 2, and 3
  • How do we start systematically capturing information from accidents and incidents in order to generate lessons?
  • Value, limits of accident models
  • Going beyond superficial cause
Mon, Nov 11
  • Reading: Kletz, chapters 19 and 21
  • Warmup: human error in a railway accident--what are the lessons?
  • Aviation accidents: specific and general lessons
Wed, Nov 13
  • Reading: Leveson, "High-Pressure Steam Engines and Computer Software"
  • Lessons from a technology whose history bears resemblance to that of software engineering
Mon, Nov 18
  • Michael Holloway from NASA Langley Research Center to visit and present on causality
  • Reading: packet
Wed, Nov 20
  • Reading: Leveson (Safeware), chapter 12
  • Integration of lessons into process
Mon, Nov 25
  • Reading: Peterson, preface and chapters 1 and 3
Mon, Dec 2
  • Reading: Peterson, chapters 4 and 6
Wed, Dec 4
  • Reading: Peterson, chapters 7, 8, and the afterword



Last updated 11/12/02 Maintained by Kimberly S. Hanks