Welcome to B4-STEP
B4-STEP is a four-year research programme which is funded by the Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) Investigator Programme , and is led by Prof Brian Fitzgerald of the Dept of Computer Science and Information Systems at the University of Limerick .
B4-STEP seeks to bridge the gap between software theory and practice. The programme is also a socio-technical and multi-disciplinary one. The programme will conduct basic and applied research in the areas of software process, methods, and tools.
The B4-STEP programme is premised on three fundamental propositions:
- Software is a vital component of ICT in general, and is of critical strategic importance to Ireland in particular.
- The software field is an applied one, and there should be a close intertwining between theory and practice, i.e., software theory should help improve practice, and software practice should inform software theory as to relevant research problems. Currently, there is a significant gap between software theory and practice.
- The software field is fundamentally a socio-technical one. Both socio and technical aspects are necessary for a ‘big picture' view of the field, neither are sufficient in isolation.
The programme will conduct basic and applied research in the areas of software process, methods, and tools. Key collaborators are SFI Fellow, Professor David Parnas, Professor Tony Cahill, SFI Walton Visiting Professor, Eileen Trauth ( Penn State University ) and Dr Joseph Feller (UCC).
In the software process area, we will study the open source software phenomenon, looking at the role it can play in the software industry. In our research we will consider socio-cultural factors and organisational/business issues, thus seeking to bring a multi-disciplinary perspective to bear on our research.
In the software methods area, we will build on Prof David Parnas' basic work to create an overarching software development method that can be transferred to practice, and tailored appropriately for different environments (multi-nationals, SMEs). We will also continue our research into agile software development approaches such as eXtreme Programming and SCRUM.
