18:30 Tue 5 May 2026, BCS London & online: Building models of software process behaviours helped by LLMs

[Immo Hüneke]

BCS Software Practice Advancement specialist group
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SPA-412: Building models of software process behaviours helped by LLMs
Speaker: Derek M Jones
When: Tuesday 5th May 2026, 18:00 for 18:30 - 20:00 GMT
Where: BCS London, 25 Copthall Avenue, London EC2R 7BP and also online
Price: Free
Booking Link: https://SPA050526.eventbrite.co.uk

Your confirmation email will provide the next step to enable you to access the webinar. 48 hours and 1 hour prior to the event reminder emails will be sent to those registered, with the non-transferable URL needed to gain access. The session will be recorded. If you do not wish to feature in the recording, please keep your microphone muted.

AGENDA

* 6:00pm - networking in BCS London over refreshments
* 6:30pm - presentation and demo begins
* 8:00pm - networking in BCS London (pizza & refreshments)
* 8:45pm at the latest: everyone off the premises (reconvene at The Old Doctor Butler's Head for more drinks & networking)

SYNOPSIS

Find out how LLMs can solve challenging mathematical problems, such as discovering the rules governing complex system behaviour.

The emergent behaviour of software processes can sometimes be described by an equation - for instance, the distribution of waiting times of tasks in a priority queue is a power law. However, deriving an equation from a specification of process behaviour requires a degree of mathematical skill that few people possess and can take many weeks of work. LLMs are capable of solving challenging mathematical problems.

Model building with an LLM is an iterative process, involving under-specified problems, dead-ends, incorrect maths and unlikely-looking solutions - but it can lead to valuable insights and predictive systems of equations.

This talk discusses the speaker's experience of using LLMs to derive equations for software processes, e.g. expected time to next reported fault, and the number of statement sequences possible using N if-statements. Suggestions for dealing with the strengths and weaknesses of LLMs will be given.

ABOUT THE PRESENTER

Derek M Jones used to write compilers that translated what developers wrote, then moved into static analysis to try and work out what they intended to write, and now does evidence-based research in software engineering.

His book Evidence-based Software Engineering discusses what is currently known about software engineering, based on an analysis of all the publicly available data. pdf, code and all data freely available online: see http://knosof.co.uk/ESEUR/

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Meetings Schedules
London - http://bcs-spa.org/index.php?page=london-meeting-programme
Cambridge - see http://http://softwareast.ning.com/events

Presentation materials from previous talks are available from the BCS SPA resources site: http://bcs-spa.org/resources.html
Also see YouTube playlist https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKBhokJ0qd3_wlvr0j85YhmNfNj8ZJ8M-
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SPA London Meetings Programme Organiser - Immo Huneke, Zuhlke Engineering Ltd. [mailto:Im...@Huneke.Co.UK]
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Forthcoming meetings: We're looking for volunteers to present or lead workshops on topics of interest to software practitioners. Please come forward with suggestions!
Tue 9 June: Michael Poulin: Treating AI’s alignment disease - intrinsic natural processing for GenAI
Wed 1 July: Sylvain Viguier, Graphcore: From Transformers to Tomorrow: Six Years of Deep Learning and What’s Next (online only)