The COMPSAC 93 Program included the presentation of software quality and productivity-related professional development seminars. Seminar topics included software process measurement and improvement, application areas of distributed databases and multimedia, and object-oriented programming. Three industry leaders provided keynote addresses during the course of the conference, which included 19 paper sessions encompassing 57 presentations and five panel sessions.
A highlight of each day of the conference sessions was a keynote speech by an international industry leader involved in hardware and software production. Mr. Ed Hurd (President of Industrial Honeywell, Inc., USA) spoke on "Software Challenges in Developing Real-Time Systems." Mr. Hurd described the hurdles faced in developing software for real-time systems and outlined some techniques which might be followed for organizing software development teams for success and overcoming the inertia which is inherent during the early phases of software development efforts. To emphasize his point, he discussed the difficulties faced in developing his keynote address. He closely associated keynote development and software development in the areas of problem definition, acquiring, organizing and assimilating information, and developing a timely, responsive plan of action to meet goals and deadlines.
A second keynote address was presented by Mr. Matthew A. Diethelm (Vice President of Intel Products Group, General Manager OPSD, Intel Corporation) on "New Software Requirements for the New Computer and Communications Industry." Mr. Diethelm discussed the advances in the computer and communications industries since the earlier days of analog computing and displayed an Intel-related timeline of product development and advancement within the industry. He also provided the Intel perspective on the future of computing and communications software and hardware development which included a far greater integration of computing and communication into the everyday human existence than is currently possible.
Dr. Yukio Mizuno (Senior Executive Vice President of NEC Corporation, Japan) delivered the final keynote address, "Recent Advances in Software Production." Dr. Mizuno reported on some of the software development techniques currently being employed in the team concepts of software development within the NEC Corporation and routinely employed by other organizations within Japan actively developing software. Chief among the concepts described by Dr. Mizuno is the infusing of software quality methods and measures throughout all aspects of software development from the earliest stages through to deployment and maintenance. He cited examples which illustrated the substantial reduction of software problems observed at each stage of software development which are attributed to the aggressive quality management techniques employed. He also discussed the small, close-knit software teams which develop parts of software and the measures used to integrate the parts into a whole.
The daily panel and paper sessions covered virtually all of the topics associated with modern software development practices with particular emphasis on aspects of object-oriented programming and development techniques. Aspects of distributed computing were also well discussed during COMPSAC 93.