09432 Report – Quantitative Software Design

Between 20.10.09 and 23.10.09, the Dagstuhl Seminar 09432, Quantitative Software Design, was held at the International Conference and Research Center (IBFI), Schloss Dagstuhl. Quantitative software design is a field of research that is not yet firmly established. A number of challenging open research issues are only recently being addressed by the academic research community (see below). The topic is also gaining increasing emphasis in industrial research, as any progress towards a more systematic and goal-driven software design promises the reduction of costs and risks of software projects, by avoiding current trial-and-error approaches to design. The whole field is therefore of high industrial relevance, though it is far from providing ready-to-use solutions. The seminar was structured around ten discussion groups that considered the question of how quantitative software engineering is, could and should be done. A number of interesting insights were gained, particularly due to the interdisciplinary nature of the seminar group and the mix of industrialists and academics. This collection summarizes these group discussions.