Managing software complexity of adaptive systems
de A. Roo · 2011
Life offers many challenges of varying difficulty and complexity.One can decide to ignore or avoid these challenges, and live life the easy way.One can also accept these challenges with an eagerness to learn and grow, and experience life to the fullest.In late 2007 I accepted the challenge to become a PhD student.Finishing a PhD is something one cannot achieve alone.During the past four years there were many people that believed in me and without their help and support I would not have been able to write this thesis.I am very grateful that these people are part of my life and would like to thank them for their share in my PhD.First of all, I would like to thank my promotor Mehmet Akşit.You offered me the opportunity to work in the Software Engineering group as a PhD student on the Octopus project.I deeply respect you, and during our inspiring meetings you often amazed me with your wealth of knowledge on widely varying subjects, and your ability to quickly grasp important concepts and always think multiple steps ahead.The discussions we had during these meetings provided the basis for the work in this thesis.I would like to thank my daily supervisors, Lodewijk Bergmans and Hasan Sözer.Both were of great support to me during my PhD.Lodewijk, during my Master's project you encouraged me to continue afterwards with a PhD, something that I hadn't given much thought before, and something that I never regretted afterwards.During the first year of my PhD, you introduced me into the world of research and inspired me with your endless enthusiasm for the subject.Hasan, you took over my daily supervision in the beginning of my second year.You just finished a PhD yourself, so this must have been an exciting new challenge for you.For the next two years we closely cooperated and your structured and focused way of working were of great guidance to me.It is no coincidence that during this period most of the results of my thesis materialized.Furthermore, you broadened my perspective and my research to the subjects of software architectures and software reliability.I always enjoyed our meetings and I am very thankful that we could continue our cooperation after you accepted a position at Özyegin University, early 2011.We definitely keep in contact, and I will visit you somewhere in Spring in İstanbul!Lodewijk, during the final year of my PhD your critical, unbiased view enabled me to improve my work and your guidance and encouragements inspired me to push myself further towards my limits.In the end, this resulted in a significantly better thesis.As both our interests include entrepreneurship, I hope we can continue our cooperation after finishing my PhD!I also would like to thank the members of my PhD committee: prof.