Juggling in free fall: Uncertainty management aspects of domain analysis methods

Abstract

Although software reuse research has borrowed extensively from artificial intelligence techniques and methods, there has been little explicit discussion in reuse research of uncertainty management, an area of critical importance in many AI applications. Yet several fundamental reuse issues, particularly in domain analysis methods and processes, can be usefully framed as problems of uncertainty. This paper characterizes ad hoc reuse, design for reuse, domain-specific reuse and domain analysis from an uncertainty-based perspective, and presents and motivates key aspects of a specific DA method. Organization Domain Modeling (ODM) as examples of uncertainty management strategies in domain analysis methods and processes.