Connecting research and practice: an experience report on research infusion with software architecture visualization and evaluation

There are many technical challenges in ensuring high life-time quality of NASA’s systems. Some of NASA’s software-related challenges could potentially be addressed by the many powerful technologies that are being developed in software research laboratories. However, most such research technologies do not make the transition from the research lab to the software lab because research infusion and technology transfer is difficult. For example, there must be evidence that the technology works in the practitioner’s particular domain, and there must be a potential for great improvements and enhanced competitive edge for the practitioner, for such infusion to take place. NASA IV&V’s Research Infusion initiative strives to facilitate such infusion. In 2006, a research infusion project involving Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU/APL) and the Fraunhofer Center for Experimental Software Engineering Maryland, was successfully completed infusing Fraunhofer’s software architecture visualization and evaluation (SAVE) tool. The infusion project helped improve JHU/APL’s software architecture and produced evidence that SAVE is applicable to software architecture problems in the aerospace domain, spawning a series of related research infusion projects. The project also led to the discovery of other needs that could not be addressed by current technologies and, therefore, spawned the research and development of a new technology that will be ready for infusion in the future. This paper describes the SAVE technology followed by a description of the infusion of SAVE at JHU/APL and the other projects that followed, as well as the newly started Dynamic SAVE research and development project. Lessons learned related to various aspects of research infusion conclude the paper.