Managing Design-Time Uncertainty
Michalis Famelis, Marsha Chećhik · 2017
Any software system is the accumulated result of many design decisions taken by its developers. During the course of development, however, developers are often uncertain about how to make these decisions. This uncertainty reflects lack of knowledge about the design of the system, rather than about the environment in which the system is intended to operate. It is therefore called design-time uncertainty, and is different from environmental uncertainty [1]. Addressing environmental uncertainty requires using strategies such as self-adaptation [2], which result in fully functional software systems, capable of operating under uncertain conditions, i.e., uncertainty-aware software. In contrast, design-time uncertainty (henceforth, also simply "uncertainty") cannot be "coded away". Rather, it must be tackled as part of the process of software development, i.e., using uncertainty-aware software development methodologies. This work makes the following contributions: (a) the DETUM model; (b) the mapping of various partial model operators to the D E TUM model; (c) based on the above, a methodology for managing design-time uncertainty, and (d) a validation of the usability and effectiveness of the methodology based on two non-trivial uncertainty management scenarios.