David J. A. Cooper

B.Eng, PhD (Curtin University)

Email: david.cooper@curtin.edu.au

Software engineering research projects

• Inspection simulator — modelling the software verification process, to compare the consequences of various software inspection strategies.
• Defect detection experiment — testing the effects of checklists and subject expertise on defect detection in software inspection.
• Software cognition studies — identifying cognitive hurdles in tracing a use case scenario through source code, and matching a statechart against source code.
• Software industry survey — eliciting responses from software engineers around Australia, regarding development methodologies, languages, tools, inspection practices and effort devoted to different development phases.
• UML verification tool — co-developed a tool to compare a Java implementation to its UML design.

Thesis

Empirical Investigations Supporting an Extensible, Theoretical Approach to Understanding Software Inspections
Supervisors: Dr Brian von Konsky, Dr Nihal Yatawara, Dr Jim Ivins and Dr Michael Robey.

Short summary: This thesis reports on the cognitive behaviour of software inspectors and the prevalence of particular software inspection practices, based on the results of four empirical studies. A theoretical framework and fine-grained model of inspection cost effectiveness are proposed to addres a lack of theory, providing a basis for the comparison of different inspection strategies. Recommendations are made with respect to the use of active guidance and cognitive support under varying conditions.
Full text

Papers

As first author:

• Obstacles to Comprehension in Usage Based Reading (with Brian R. von Konsky, Michael C. Robey and David A. McMeekin),
  18th Australian Software Engineering Conference (ASWEC'07), 2007, pp. 233–242.
• Using Dependence Graphs to Assist Manual and Automated Object Oriented Software Inspections (with Mun Wai Chan, Michael Harding, Gautam Mehra, Peter Woodward, Brian R. von Konsky and Michael C. Robey),
  17th Australian Software Engineering Conference (ASWEC'06), 2006, pp. 262–269.
• Java Implementation Verification Using Reverse Engineering (with Benjamin Khoo, Brian R. von Konsky and Michael C. Robey),
  27th Australasian Conference on Computer Science (ACSC'04), 2004, pp. 203–211.