February General Meeting  

"Structure Assurance�

presented by

T. Scott Ankrum

and

Alfred Kromholz

Thursday, February 18, 2010

At the

The Golden Bull Restaurant
in
Gaithersburg, MD
 
Registration & Networking: 6:00 p.m.
Dinner: 7:00 p.m.
General Announcements: 8:00 p.m.
Program: 8:15 p.m.
Adjourn: 9:15 p.m.

The cost is $15.00 for members and students or $25.00 for non-members.

Please register using the button above or by contacting Mrs. Michele Withnell at (301) 461-2469 or .    Please note:  Meal preferences cannot be guaranteed if one is not registered by Tuesday, January 19, 6:00pm. You may attend the presentation without attending the dinner.

Important Notice: ASQ Section 509 is responsible for the meals for all �No shows� at The Golden Bull Restaurant.  Please help us control our losses by notifying our Arrangements Chair Mrs. Michele Withnell at to cancel your dinner prior to the event.  Thank you for your cooperation!

Program Summary:

For safety-, mission-, or security-critical systems, there are typically regulations or acquisition guidelines requiring a documented body of evidence to provide a compelling justification that the system satisfies specified critical properties. Current frameworks suggest the detailed outline of the final product but leave the truly meaningful and challenging aspects of arguing assurance to the developers and reviewers.

We began with two major hypotheses. We selected a software notation suitable for building structured safety cases and applied it to three disparate assurance standards. Each of the three standard mapping efforts is discussed, along with the problems we encountered. In addition to the standards, we used the notation to structure an assurance case for a practical security-critical system, and we describe the lessons learned from that experience. We conclude with practical options for using our mappings of the standards, including a methodology for attaining high assurance levels based on an extension of the familiar V-chart structure, and how well our initial hypotheses are borne out by the project.

Speakers' Biography: 

T. Scott Ankrum has been a project manager, software designer and developer and has over 30 years of experience in many aspects of computing, from mainframe systems to distributed systems development and client/server design.  He has managed projects and led development teams, and has been personally involved in software development from requirements definition to final testing. Mr. Ankrum is Senior Software System Engineer at the MITRE Corporation, working in software development process improvement and requirements management, and where he led the Assurance Frameworks research task.  He holds a B.S. degree in Computer Science from American University and a Master of Software Engineering degree from the University of Maryland. He is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the IEEE Computer Society, and a senior member of the American Society for Quality (ASQ).  He is currently the chairman of the local ASQ Software SIG.

Alfred Kromholz received a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering from Cornell University, with a side concentration in European languages and literature. After working for several years on the Apollo program, he went on to a master's degree in Classics and a PhD in ancient culture, both involving extensive computational analysis. After spending a dozen years in the Near East combining work in computers and anthropology, he returned to the US to join the space station program, where he focused on systems integration, interactions of technology and society, and organizational culture change. Dr. Kromholz has been with MITRE's Software Engineering Center for 10 years, during which he has worked in a wide range of areas, including both civilian sector (IRS, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Energy) and DoD (DISA, Defense Logistics Agency, Army and Navy/Marine Corps). His efforts tend to concentrate on program infrastructure and organizational improvement- change and configuration management, quality assurance, requirements management, the "ilities" � and on optimizing relationships among products, processes, and, above all, people.

DIRECTIONS TO THE GOLDEN BULL

From Rt. 495. Go N. Rt. I-270 (in Maryland). Take Exit 11 off of I-270 East onto Route 124 (Montgomery Village Avenue). Make the first right at the intersection of Route#355 (Frederick Avenue). Go South on Frederick Avenue 0.5 miles. Make right turn onto Dalamar Street to #7 Dalamar Street.

From the intersection of Shady Grove Road and Frederick Avenue (Rt. 355) (in Maryland). Go North on Frederick Avenue about seven miles. Crossover overpass. Continue North to Dalamar Street, and then turn left onto #7 Dalamar Street. Ample parking is available at restaurant.