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Donald Firesmith

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Donald Firesmith
Born (1952-06-14) June 14, 1952 (age 72)
NationalityUnited States
Alma materArizona State University
Known forMethod Framework for Engineering System Architectures
Scientific career
FieldsSystem engineering, software engineering, Requirements engineering, method engineering, and object-oriented design
InstitutionsSoftware Engineering Institute

Donald Firesmith (1952) is an American software engineer, consultant, and trainer at the Software Engineering Institute (SEI).

Biography

Firesmith received his B.A. in Mathematics and German from Linfield College in 1975 and his M.A. in Mathematics from Arizona State University in 1977. He also studied one year at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.

Firesmith started working in the computer business as a systems analyst in 1981 and has been quality engineer, configuration manager, and data manager for Computer Science Corporation in the US, Germany, and Switzerland. From 1984 to 1988 he was an OO methodologist at Magnavox Electronic Systems Corporation. And from 1988 to 1995 he was President of Advanced Software Technology Specialists, a small consulting and training company. From 1994 to 1997 he has been an acquisition editor and editor and chief of Reference Books at SIGS Books. And further he was a Senior advisory software engineer at StorageTek, where he worked as a technical leader, requirements engineer, and software architect, Chief architect Lante Corporation, which specialized in producing eMarketplaces, and Chief architect for the North American Business Unit of Cambridge Technology Partners.

Since 2003 he is a Senior Member of the Technical Staff at the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) where he works in the Acquisition Support Program helping the United States Government acquire software-intensive systems.[1]

Work

Engineering Safety- and Security-Related Requirements for Software-Intensive Systems

For the past decade, Firesmith has been researching the intersection of requirements, safety, and security engineering in terms of common underlying concepts, techniques, and processes.[2][3] He has developed a safety- and security-related requirements ontology and common process for engineering the following kinds of requirements:

  • Safety and security requirements, which are types of quality requirements specifying minimal levels of safety and security attributes
  • Safety- and security-significant requirements, which includes functional, data, interface, and other quality requirements that have safety or security ramifications
  • Safety and security subsystem/functional requirements, which are the requirements for functions or subsystems that exist merely for safety or security reasons
  • Safety and /security constraints, which are architecture, design, implementation, and deployment mechanisms, patterns, and other decisions that are treated as requirements

Method Engineering (ME) and Open Process Environment and Notation (OPEN)

Firesmith is a co-founder of the international OPEN Consortium.[4] Firesmith was the principle developer of the OPEN Modeling Language (OML).[5] Firesmith is the founder of the The OPEN Process Framework Repository Organization and the developer of its more than a thousand free, open-source, reusable method components.

Method Framework for Engineering System Architectures (MFESA)

Firesmith is the primary developer of the Method Framework for Engineering System Architectures.[6] MFESA consists of the following:

  • Ontology defining the key concepts of system architecture engineering and their relationships
  • Metamodel defining the foundational abstract supertypes of method components for engineering system architectures including architectural:
    • Work products including architectures and architectural representations such as models and documents
    • Work units including activities, tasks, and techniques for producing the work products
    • Producers including architects, architecture teams, and architecture tools that perform the work units to produce the work products
  • Repository of free, open-source, reusable method components for creating situation-specific system architecture engineering methods
  • Metamethod for creating situation-specific system architecture engineering methods by selecting appropriate method components from the repository, tailoring them as appropriate, and integrating them to form the new architecture engineering method

QUality Assessment of System Architectures and their Requirements (QUASAR)

QUASAR is a method for independently assessing the quality of a system's architecture and its architecturally-significant requirements.[7][8][9] QUASAR is based on the concept of requirements and architecture quality cases, which consist of:

  • Claims that the requirements and architecture have sufficient quality, which are justified by clear and compelling
  • Arguments for believing these claims, which are supported by sufficient credible
  • Evidence

The QUASAR method consists of following three phases:

  • Quality Assessment Initiation, during which the teams are prepared for the assessments and consensus is reached concerning the scope and scheduling of the assessments
  • Requirements Quality Assessment, during which the quality of the system or subsystem's architecturally-significant requirements is assessed in terms of its associated requirements quality cases
  • Architecture Quality Assessment, during which the quality of the system or subsystem's architecture is assessed in terms of its associated architectural quality cases

Publications

He is the author of several technical books in system and software engineering as well as numerous technical articles, conference papers, and tutorials[10]. A selection:

  • 1993. Object-Oriented Requirements Analysis and Logical Design: A Software Engineering Approach, John Wiley & Sons, ISBN 0-471-57807-X
  • 1995. The Dictionary of Object Technology: The Definitive Desk Reference, Cambridge University Books, ISBN 0-13-373887-6, with Edward M. Eykholt
  • 1998. OPEN Modeling Language (OML) Reference Manual, Cambridge University Books, ISBN 1-884842-75-5, with Brian Henderson-Sellers and Ian Graham
  • 1998. Documenting a Complete Java Application using OPEN, Addison-Wesley Longman, ISBN 0-201-34277-4, with Scott Krutsch, Marshall Stowe, and Greg Hendley
  • 2001. The OPEN Process Framework, Addison-Wesley Longman, ISBN 0-201-67510-2, with Brian Henderson-Sellers
  • 2008. The Method Framework for Engineering System Architectures, Auerbach Publication, ISBN 978-1-4200-8575-4, with Peter Capell, Dietrich Falkenthal, Charles B. Hammons, DeWitt T. Latimer IV, and Tom Merendino

References

  1. ^ Home Page on the SEI Website Accessed 23 September 2009.
  2. ^ SEI Training Course Accessed 23 September 2009.
  3. ^ Tutorial Accessed 23 September 2009.
  4. ^ What is OPEN?
  5. ^ OML Refence Manual Accessed 23 September 2009.
  6. ^ MFESA Book Accessed 23 September 2009.
  7. ^ SEI webpage describing QUASAR Accessed 23 September 2009.
  8. ^ QUASAR HandbookAccessed 23 September 2009.
  9. ^ QUASAR TutorialAccessed 23 September 2009.
  10. ^ List of publications from the DBLP Bibliography Server Accessed 23 September 2009.
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