Sid Bailin, CTA, and
Scott Henninger, University of Nebraska
Scope:
This working group attempted to uncover and analyze some of the key
"scenes" in the drama of domain engineering. The hope was that
the spirit of the group would be conducive
to adopting the metaphors of theatrical
criticism to the work at hand. To this end, the group was
very successful, as reflected in the summary report.
The report clearly outlines who the main characters are, what
the conflicts are that drive the story forward, how the dramatic tension
is resolved, etc. (there is quite a bit of precedent for this approach,
e.g., R. Schank's book Tell me a Story ,
B. Laurel's book Computers as
Theater , T. Nelson's Theory of Virtuality ).
One of the goals of the group was to try to
steer clear of conventional process definition, in the belief that that
level of analysis tends to bypass the key underlying difficulties/
opportunities. By focusing on a specific problem context of a
hypothesized sample organization and software development requirements,
the group avoided trying to formulate a general theory -- trying,
instead, to discover useful deep insights about the DE process,
however incomplete.
Goals:
1. Identify recognizable (productive or non-productive) activity
patterns that arise in DA
2. Identify key obstacles to selling, planning, enacting, and
utilizing a DA, formulated in terms of these activity patterns
3. Identify approaches to overcoming the obstacles