A Guide To Automation Body Of Knowledge
Heron Mathis
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Many organizations use study groups, where each person in the group is responsible for a domain, set of topics, or even just a single topic from the exam. Each person leads a review of their assigned topic in a lunch & learn type format. By spreading it around, everyone learns and teaches in turn. The CIP Study Guide, available to AIIM+ members (in the CIP Study Group in online community) or in the AIIM+ Pro library, can be used as your source material.
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The CIP complements the CRM very well. The CRM is a very deep dive into records management practices, but it doesn't cover some of the other aspects of information management that are important. CIP addresses records management as one of many information management functions/processes within an organization and helps to provide a broader contextual picture. Many information professionals hold both the CRM and CIP, as well as other certifications.
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AIIM worked with industry experts and focus groups to define the body of knowledge necessary for information professionals to be successful in the Intelligent Information Management practice. The CIP exam assesses competency in this body of knowledge.
The CIP exam was designed to demonstrate the expertise and experience one might acquire over a long career in the Intelligent Information Management Industry. Some have passed the exam with little preparation. Others need a little help.
Although Model-Based Software Engineering (MBE) is a widely accepted Software Engineering (SE) discipline, no agreed-upon core set of concepts and practices (i.e., a Body of Knowledge) has been defined for it yet. With the goals of characterizing the contents of the MBE discipline, promoting a global consistent view of it, clarifying its scope with regard to other SE disciplines, and defining a foundation for the development of educational curricula on MBE, this paper proposes the contents for a Body of Knowledge for MBE. We also describe the methodology that we have used to come up with the proposed list of contents, as well as the results of a survey study that we conducted to sound out the opinion of the community on the importance of the proposed topics and their level of coverage in the existing SE curricula.
Model-Based Software Engineering (MBE) is a widely accepted Software Engineering (SE) discipline that promotes the use of models and model transformations as the fundamental elements of software development [5]. With almost 20 years of existence [3, 18], MBE is already part of most SE curricula, and the industrial use of its concepts and practices keeps growing.Footnote 1
The response from the community was significant (101 answers), and the results of the survey provide an interesting snapshot of the current situation. This paper presents these results and formulates a proposal of the topics that should form an MBEBOK. The long-term goal for the MBEBOK is to significantly help consolidate the field of MBE as well as to improve the way it is currently taught and practiced. Our proposal also aims at providing the basis upon which an extension of the Guide to the Software Engineering BoK (SWEBOK) can be developed to entail all aspects related to MBE.
The paper is structured in Sect. 5. After this introduction, Sect. 2 discusses what a Body of Knowledge is and briefly presents some of them related to Software, in particular the SWEBOK. Then, Sect. 3 identifies the basic topics that should form part of contents of the MBEBOK, as well as the methodology we have followed to develop it. Finally, Sect. 4 discusses some issues related to the proposal, and Sect. 5 concludes the paper and outlines the next steps.
A Body of Knowledge (BoK) is a set of concepts, terminology, and tasks that constitute a professional domain. Often, a BoK is developed by a professional association (e.g., ACM, IEEE) and captures the knowledge that is inherent, sometimes tacit, and often explicit in the interactions and literature that occur in that professional domain. The main goals of a BoK on a given discipline are:
Currently, there are a number of BoKs for various software-related disciplines; some are mature documents with a rigorous review and revision process (e.g., SWEBOK), while others are evolving (e.g., SLEBOK):
The SWEBOK was developed as an international collective effort, in order to achieve the goal of providing a consistent global view of software engineering. The committee appointed two chief editors, several co-editors to support them, and editors for each of the Knowledge Areas. All chapters were openly reviewed, in an editing process that engaged approximately 150 reviewers from 33 countries. Professional and scientific societies, as well as public agencies from all over the world involved in software engineering, were contacted, made aware of this project, and invited to participate in the review process too. Presentations on the project were made at various international venues. The 2004 edition was revised in 2014, using the same editing process, giving birth in 2014 to the current version (v3) of the SWEBOK [4]. The SWEBOK has been adopted by ISO and IEC as ISO/IEC TR 19759:2005.Footnote 2
One complete KA of the SWEBOK is devoted to Software Engineering Models and Methods (Chapter 9). As stated in the SWEBOK, software engineering models and methods impose structure on software engineering with the goal of making that activity systematic, repeatable, and ultimately more success-oriented. The use of models provides an approach to problem solving, a notation, and procedures for model construction and analysis. Methods provide an approach to the systematic specification, design, construction, test, and verification of the end-item software and associated work products.
Properties (such as completeness, consistency, and correctness) and expression of models (as typed and attributed elements representing entities, and associations representing relationships among them, using graphical or textual notations)
Type of models: It briefly discusses models and aggregation of submodels and provides some general characteristics of model types commonly found in the software engineering practice, including:
Software Engineering Methods: It presents a brief summary of commonly used software engineering methods, including heuristic methods, formal methods, prototyping, and agile methods. This part is more general and aims to apply to any SE discipline, not only to MBE.
MBE principles and techniques can be used for Software Language Engineering (e.g., metamodels can be used to define the abstract syntax of software languages). As such, there are relationships between SLEBOK and MBEBOK. Although these relationships are still evolving, due to the relative immaturity of both BoKs, we can make some key observations:
The proposed list contains the topics that were considered to be relevant for the MBEBOK, i.e., that should be part of the knowledge that any MBE practitioner should possess. The list proposed in the survey, which is shown in the first column of Figs. 2 and 3, is structured into the following nine sections.
The surveyFootnote 3 was conducted in December 2018. An invitation to participate was sent to all major Software Engineering and Modeling distribution lists, with a questionnaire where participants were asked to grade their perceived importance for each topic and whether the topic was covered in any of the courses taught at their institution. The detailed instructions given to the participants were the following:
Figures 2 and 3 display the results in tabular form. Each row represents a specific topic, with the average score and standard deviation of the assigned importance and coverage at BSc and MSc levels. The last two columns show the difference between the importance assigned to a topic and how it is covered in the curricula of the institution, in order to identify possible decompensations. Cells shaded in green color highlight the highest scores, while red-shaded cells identify the lowest. The highest standard deviations are highlighted in yellow; they identify the topics with less consensus.
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