Invited Talks

Prof. Mike Holcombe

Dept. of Computer Science University of Sheffield, UK

Agile Formal Methods for a Dynamic Business World

Abstract
Change is a major factor in all software development. Successful programs undergo evolutionary change in terms of new versions for a variety of reasons. However change also occurs within the development process, change often prompted by changes in requirements brought on by changes in the business context and needs.

Few software engineering methodologies, apart from the recent agile methodologies such as Extreme Programming, seem to be designed to manage and support such factors as requirements change and this is particularly true of formal specification languages.

We will look at some issues related to how changes happen, how these manifest themselves in the transformation of requirements and discuss possible ways in which this can be formalised.

A particular interest will be in the implications for managing the testing of a changing system.