Mladen A. Vouk

Research & Development Areas, Projects, and Associations

• Software Process and Risk Management
• Software Reliability and Fault Tolerance
• Software Testing
  • Network-based and agent-based testing
• Software Engineering Issues in Networking Software and Network-Based Applications
  • Agent-Based Data Mining for Scientific Workflows - Scientific Data Management Center
  • Teaching Hospital Information System
• General Software Engineering
  • Year 2000 Software Issues
  • Metrics

Selected Related Publications (1990-present)

• Journals and Books
  1. Vouk, M.A., "Back-to-Back Testing," Information and Software Technology, Vol. 32 (1), pp 34-45, 1990. [PDF]
  2. McAllister D.F., Sun C.E. and Vouk M.A., "Reliability of Voting in Fault-Tolerant Software Systems for Small Output Spaces", IEEE Trans. Rel., Vol. 39(5), pp 524-534, 1990. [PDF]
  3. Eckhardt D.E., Caglayan A.K., Kelly J.P.J., Knight J.C., Lee L.D., McAllister D.F., and Vouk M.A., "An Experimental Evaluation of Software Redundancy as a Strategy for Improving Reliability," IEEE Trans. Soft. Eng., Vol 17 (7), July 1991, pp 692-702. Reprinted in Fault-Tolerant Software Systems:Techniques and Applications, ed. Hoang Pham, IEEE Computer Society Press, pp 72-82, 1992. [PDF]
  4. Vouk, M.A., "Engineering of Telecommunications Software", High-Speed Communications Networks, editor H. Perros, Plenum Press, New York, pp. 227-237, 1992. [PDF] [PS]
  5. Vouk, M.A., Paradkar, A., and McAllister, D., "Modeling Execution Time of Multistage N-Version Fault-Tolerant Software," in Fault-Tolerant Software Systems: Techniques and Applications, ed. Hoang Pham, IEEE Computer Society Press, pp 55-61, 1992, reprinted from COMPSAC90. [PDF] [PS]
  6. Vouk M.A., McAllister D.F., Eckhardt, D.E., and Kim K., "An Empirical Evaluation of Some Software Fault-Tolerance Schemes in the Presence of Failure Correlation," Journal of Computer and Software Engineering Special Issue on Reliable Software, Vol 1(4), 367-388,1993. [PDF] [PS]
  7. Vouk M.A., "Software Reliability Engineering", in Encyclopedia of Microcomputers, eds. A. Kent and J.G. Williams, Marcell Dekker, Inc., pp. 161-178, 1995 [PDF]
  8. Jones W. and Vouk M.A., "Software Reliability Field Data Analysis," Chapter 11 in Handbook of Software Reliability Engineering, McGraw Hill, editor M. Lyu, pp. 439-489, January 1996. [PDF] [PDF]
  9. McAllister D.F. and Vouk M.A., "Software Fault-Tolerance Engineering," Chapter 14 in Handbook of Software Reliability Engineering, McGraw Hill, editor M. Lyu, pp. 567-614, January 1996. [PDF]
  10. Tai K.C., Vouk M.A., Paradkar A., Lu P. , "Predicate Based Testing," IBM Systems Journal, Vol 33 (3), p 445, 1994. [PDF] [PS]
  11. Elmaghraby S.E., Baxter E.I., and Vouk M.A., "An Approach to the Modeling and Analysis of Software Production Processes," Intl. Trans. Operational Res., Vol. 2 (1), pp. 117-135, 1995. [PDF]
  12. Paradkar, A., K.C. Tai and M. Vouk, "Automated test generation for cause-effect graphs," IEEE Transactions on Reliability, Vol. 45(4), pp. 515-530, 1996. [PDF]
  13. Potok, T. and M. Vouk, "The effects of the business model on the object-oriented software development productivity," IBM Systems Journal, Vol. 36(1), pp. 140-161, 1997. [PDF] [PS] [HTML]
  14. Paradkar, A., K.C. Tai and M. Vouk, "Specification-based testing using cause-effect graphs," Annals of Software Engineering, Vol. 4, pp. 133-158, 1997 [PDF] [PS]
  15. Potok, T. and M. Vouk, "Productivity Analysis of Object-Oriented Software Developed in a Commercial Environment," Software Practice and Experience, Vol 29(1), 833-847, 1999. [PDF]
  16. J. Voas, K. Kanoun, J. Dugan, L. Hatton, M. Vouk, Fault-Tolerance - Roundtable, IEEE Software, Vol. 18, No. 4, July/August 2001, pp 54-47. [PDF] [HTML]
  17. Mladen A Vouk and Antony T. Rivers "Construction of Reliable Software in Resource-Constrained Environments," Chapter 9, in Case Studies in Reliabilitiy and Maintenance, Editors: Wallace R. Blischke and D.N. Prabhakar Murthy, Wiley-Interscience, John Wiley and Sons, 2003, pp. 205-231 [PDF - Draft]
  18. Mladen A Vouk, "Software Reliability Engineering of Numerical Systems," Chapter 13, in Accuracy and Reliability in Scientific Computing, Editor: Bo Einarsson, ISBN 0-89871-584-9, SIAM, 2005, pp. 205-231 [PDF - Draft]
  19. Jiang Zheng; Williams, L.; Nagappan, N.; Snipes, W.; Hudepohl, J.P.; Vouk, M.A.;, "On the Value of Static Analysis for Fault Detection in Software," Software Engineering, IEEE Transactions on, Volume 32, Issue 4, April 2006 Page(s):240 - 253 [PDF - Draft] [PDF - Draft] [PDF]

• Conferences and Workshops
  1. Vouk, M.A., Caglayan, A., Eckhardt D.E., Kelly, J., Knight, J., McAllister, D., Walker, L., "Analysis of faults detected in a large-scale multiversion software development experiment," DASC '90, pp 378-385, 1990. [PDF]
  2. Vouk, M.A., "Using Back-to-Back Testing for Regression Test and Porting," Proc. 7th International Conference on Testing Computer Software, pp 209-218, 1990.
  3. Vouk, M.A. and Tai, K.C "Software Testing and Reliability", Workshop on Issues in Software Reliability Estimation, Purdue University, May 21, 1991
  4. Vouk, M.A., "Modeling Software Reliability and Fault Removal During Structure Based Testing," 9th Quality and Productivity Research Conference, Corning, New York, June 1992
  5. Vouk M.A., "Using Reliability Models During Testing with Non-Operational Profiles," Proc. Second Workshop on Issues in Software Reliability Estimation, October 12- 13, 1992, Bellcore, Livingston, N.J. [PDF] [PS]
  6. Cramp R., Vouk M.A., and Jones W., "On Operational Availability of a Large Software-Based Telecommunications System," Proc. Third Intl. Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering, IEEE CS, pp. 358-366, 1992. [PDF] [PS]
  7. Kenney G.Q, and Vouk M.A., "Measuring Field Quality of Wide-Distribution Commercial Software," Proc. Thrid Intl. Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering, IEEE CS, pp. 351-357, 1992. [PDF]
  8. Elmaghraby S.E., Baxter E., Vouk M., "The Modeling and Analysis of Software Production Proceses: An Approach Via PETAN," Proc. 11th ARO Conferences, June 1993. [PDF] [PS]
  9. Tai K.C., Paradkar A., Su H.K. and Vouk M.A., "Use of Cause-Effect Graphs for Software Specification and Validation", CASCON'93, pp. 495-504, 1993 [PDF]
  10. Vouk M.A. and Tai K.C., "Some Issues in Multi-Phase Software Reliability Modeling," CASCON '93, pp. 513-523, 1993 [PDF] [PS]
  11. M. Vouk, and A. Paradkar, "Report on the The NCSU Solution to the Generic Problem Exercise: Boiler Control and Monitoring System," NCSU, May 1993, in the Proc. of the International Invitational Workshop on the Design and Review of Software Controlled Safety- Related Systems, pp. 209-222, June 1993.
  12. Vouk M.A., Tai K.C., and Paradkar A., "Empirical Studies of Predicate-Based Software Testing," in Proc. Fifth Intl. Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering, IEEE CS, pp. 55-64, November 1994. [PDF] [PS]
  13. A. Rivers and M.A. Vouk, "An Experimental Evaluation of Hyper-Geometric Code Testing Coverage Model", in Proc. 1995 Software Engineering Research Forum, Boca Raton, FL, pp. 41-50, November 1995. [PDF]
  14. T. Potok and M.A. Vouk, "Development Productivity for Commercial Software Using Object-Oriented Methods", in Proc. CASCON '95, Toronto, Canada, CD-ROM, pp. 52, November 1995. [PDF]
  15. A. Paradkar, K.C. Tai, and M. A. Vouk. "Automated Test Generation for Cause-Effect Graphs," In Proc. 7th International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering, pp 66-75, October 1996. [PDF]
  16. K. Kim, M. A. Vouk, and D.F. McAllister "An Empirical Evaluation of Maximum Likelihood Voting in High Inter- Version Failure Correlation Conditions," In Proc. 7th International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering, pp 330-339, October 1996. [PDF]
  17. P. Dixit, M. A. Vouk, D.L. Bitzer and C. Alix, "Availability of NovaNET - A Wide-Area Network-Based Education System," In Proc. 7th International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering, pp 213-218, October 1996. [PDF] [PS] [PDF-Color]
  18. P. Dixit, M.A. Vouk, and D.L. Bitzer, "Reliability Behavior of a Large Network-Based Education System," 8th International Sumposium on Software Reliability Engineering, Case Studies, pp. 43-56, November 1997. [PDF] [PS] [PDF-Color]
  19. K. Kim, M.A. Vouk, D.F. McAllister, "Fault-Tolerant Software Voters Based on Fuzzy Equivalence Relations," in Proc. IEEE Aerospace Conference, March 1998, Vol. 4, pp 5-19. [PDF] [PS]
  20. F. Daniels, K. Kim, and M.A. Vouk, "The Reliable Hybrid Pattern - A Generalized Software Fault Tolerance Design Pattern," The 4th Pattern Languages of Programming Conference (PLoP'97), Monticello, IL, September 3-5, 1997 (Washington University Technical Report 97-34). To appear in the Pattern Languages of Program Design 4, Addison-Wesley Longman, 1999. [PDF] [PS]
  21. A.T Rivers and M.A. Vouk, "Resource-Constrained Non-Operational Testing of Software," in Proceedings of the 9th International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering, IEEE Computer Society Press, Paderborn, Germany, pp. 154-163, November 1998.
      This paper received the ISSRE'98 "Best Paper" award [PDF] [PS]
  22. Thomas E. Potok, Mladen A. Vouk, "A Model of Correlated Team Behavior in a Software Development Environment," in Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Application-Specific Systems and Software Engineering Technology (ASSET'99), March 24-27, 1999, Richardson, Texas, pp. 280 - 283 [PDF] [PS] and
  23. Anthony T. Rivers and Mladen A. Vouk "Guiding Resource Constrained Software Testing," IEEE Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering, 1999, Proceedings of the 10th International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering, IEEE Computer Society Press, Boca Raton, Florida, USA, pp. 180 -188, November 1999. [PDF]
  24. Karacali, B., K-C. Tai, M.A. Vouk, "Deadlock Detection of EFSMs Using Simultaneous Reachability Analysis," The International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks, FTCS-30/DCCA-8, New York, NY, June 25-28, 2000, pp 315-340, 2000 [PDF] [PS]
  25. Williams, L., Wang, L., Vouk, M., "Good Enough" Reliability for Extreme Programming, Fast Abstract in the Supplementary Proceedings of 13th International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering (ISSRE), November 2002, pp 149-150 [PDF]
  26. Nagappan Nachiappan, Laurie Williams, Mladen Vouk, "Good Enough" Software Reliability Estimation Plug-in for Eclipse," Poster at OOPSLA 2003 IBM Eclipse Technology eXchange (ETX), May 8, 2003. [PDF - Draft]
  27. Williams L.E., M. Maximilien, M.A Vouk, "Test-driven development as a defect-reduction practice", IEEE 14th International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering (ISSRE), Denver, Cob, 17-20 November 2003, pp 34-45 [PDF - Draft]
  28. Nagappan Nachiappan, Laurie Williams, Mladen Vouk, "Towards a Metric Suite for Early Software Reliability Assessment,´ ISSRE 2003 Supplemantal Proceedings - FastAbstracts, Denver, CO, 17-20 November 2003, pp. 238-239 [PDF - Draft]
  29. Martin Davidsson, Jiang Zheng, Nachiappan Nagappan, Laurie Williams, Mladen Vouk, "GERT: An Empirical Reliability Estimation and Testing Feedback Tool," Proceedings of the 15th IEEE International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering. Nov. 2-5, 2004 Saint-Malo, France, pp 269-280, 2004 [PDF - Draft]
  30. Nachiappan Nagappan, Laurie Williams, John Hudepohl, Will Snipes, Mladen Vouk, "A Preliminary Investigation of Automated Software Inspection," Proceedings of the 15th IEEE International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering. Nov. 2-5, 2004 Saint-Malo, France, pp 429-439 [PDF - Draft]
  31. Mark Sherriff, Laurie Williams and Mladen Vouk, "Using in-process metrics to predict defect density in Haskell programs," Fast Abstracts, Supplementary Proceedings of the 15th IEEE International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering Nov. 2-5 2004 Saint Malo, France, pp. 19-20, 2004 [PDF - Draft]
  32. Nachiappan Nagappan, Laurie Williams, Mladen Vouk and Jason Osborne, "Using in-process testing metrics to estimate software reliability: A feasibility study," Fast Abstracts, Supplementary Proceedings of the 15th IEEE International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering Nov. 2-5 2004 Saint Malo, France, pp. 21-22, 2004 [PDF - Draft]
  33. Kera Z. Bell and Mladen A. Vouk, "Effectiveness of stochastically generated dependencies in pairwise testing," Fast Abstracts, Supplementary Proceedings of the 15th IEEE International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering Nov. 2-5 2004 Saint Malo, France, pp. 33-34 [PDF - Draft]
  34. Kera Z. Bell, Mladen A. Vouk, "Assessing N-Wise Approach For Use in System Security Testing," Student Papers, Supplementary Proceedings of the 15th IEEE International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering Nov. 2-5 2004 Saint Malo, France, pp.73-74, 2004. [PDF - Draft]
  35. Nachiappan Nagappan, Laurie Williams, Mladen Vouk, Jason Osborne, "Early estimation of software quality using in-process testing metrics: a controlled case study," Third Workshop on SofTware Quality, 17 May 2005, St. Louis, Missouri, in coonjunction with ICSE05, in ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes, Vol 30 (4), 3-WoSQ Procs., pp.46-52. [PDF - Draft]
  36. Sherriff, M., Nagappan, N., Williams, L., Vouk, M.,"Early Estimaton of Defect Density Using an In-Process Haskell Metrics Model," First International Workshop on Advances in Model-Based Software Testing (A-MOST), May 2005, ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes, Vol 30 (4), A-MOST procs., pp. 1-6 [PDF - Draft]
  37. Layman, L.; Williams, L.; Osborne, J.; Berenson, S.; Slaten, K.; Vouk, M.; "How and Why Collaborative Software Development Impacts the Software Engineering Course," Frontiers in Education, 2005. FIE '05. Proceedings 35th Annual Conference 19-22 Oct. 2005 Page(s):T4C-9 - T4C-14 [PDF]
  38. Nachiappan Nagappan, Laurie Williams, Jason Osborne, Mladen Vouk, Pekka Abrahamsson, "Providing Test Quality Feedback Using Static Source Code and Automatic Test Suite Metrics," Proceedings of the 16th IEEE International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering Nov. 8-11 2005 Chicago, IL, pp. 85-94, 2005 [PDF]
  39. Michele Strom, Martin Davidsson, Laurie Williams, Mladen Vouk, "The 'Good Enough' Reliability Tool (GERT) - Version 2," Fast Abstracts, Supplemental Proceedings of the 16th IEEE International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering, Nov. 8-11 2005 Chicago, IL, pp. 4-35 to 4-37, 2005 [PDF]
  40. Xia Cai and Michael R. Lyu, Mladen A. Vouk, "An Experimental Evaluation on Reliability Features of N-Version Programming," Proceedings of the 16th IEEE International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering Nov. 8-11 2005 Chicago, IL, pp. 161-171, 2005 [PDF]
  41. Bell, K. Z. and Vouk, M. A. "On Effectiveness of Pairwise Methodology or Testing Network-Centric Software," Proceedings of ITI 3rd International Conference on Information & Communications Technology: Enabling Technologies for the New Knowledge Society, edited by Mohamed A. Salem and Mahmoud T. El-Hadidi, pages 221 - 235, Cairo, Egypt, December 2005. [PDF]
  42. Mouallem, P. and Vouk.M., "Fault Tolerance and Reliability in Scientific Workflows, " Proc. of ETFS 2006 - International Workshop on Engineering of Fault-Tolerant Software, Luxembourg, Luxembourg, 12-13 June 2006, pp. 27-41. [PDF]

• Selected Reports
  1. D. Borger and M.A. Vouk, "Modeling Behavior of Large Software Projects", Technical Report, CCSP TR-91/19, NCSU, 1991 [PDF] [PS]
  2. T. Potok, and M. Vouk, "Productivity of Object-Oriented Software Development," CACC Technical Report TR-96/31, August 1996. [PDF] [PS]

• Selected Tutorials
  1. M.A. Vouk, "Software Reliability Engineering," a tutorial presented at the 1998 Annual Reliability and Maintainability Symposium, Anneheim, CA, January 1998.
     This tutorial received the 1999 RAMS Alan O. Plait Award for Tutorial Excellence, [PDF] [PS]
  2. Voas Jeffrey, Joanne Bechta Dugan, Mladen Vouk, Ann Miller; Samuel Keene, "Developing Fault Tolerant Software", IEEE CD-ROM Tutorial, ISBN 0-7803-6843-6, IEEE Product # EC145-TBR, 2002

• Selected Reviews and Editorials
  1. Vouk, M.A., a 1996 Review of Software Assessment - Reliability, Safety, Testability," by Friedman and Voas, J. Wiley and Sons, published in 1995
  2. Vouk, M.A., "Time-to-next-failure: Who cares," IEEE Transactions on Reliability, March 1996, Vol. 45 (1), pp 1-1.
  3. Vouk, M.A., "Data, data, data," IEEE Transactions on Reliability, June 1996, Vol. 45 (2), pp 169-169

• Pending
  1. Williams, L. and Vouk, M., "Agile Software Development" in Wiley Encyclopedia of Computer Science and Engineering, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., revision requested March 28, 2005, revision submitted June 27, 2005. [PDF]

Related Publications Prior to 1990

Organization of Related Professional Meetings

• 1990- present, International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering (ISSRE), Member of the Program Committee, General Chair of the 1992 symposium (RTP, NC), Program Committee Co-Chair for the 1995 event, Publications Chair for the 1996 event, Tutorials Co-Chair for the 1997 event, Publications Chair for the 2000, 2001 and 2002 events, Sponsor Chair for 2004, General Chair of the 2006 event.
• 1991- present, International International Conference on Information Technology Interfaces (ITI), Member of the International Program Committee (yearly event, ITI'91 - ITI'05)
• 2001, 2002, 2004, 2005, IEEE High Assurance System Engineering Conference [HASE 2001, Program Committee Co-Chair, Boca Raton, Florida, October 2001] [HASE 2002, Program Committee Member, Tokyo, Japan, October 2002] [HASE 2004, Program Committee Member, 25-26 March, 2004, Tampa Florida] [HASE 2005, Program Committee Member, 13-14 October, 2005, Heiderlberg, Germany]
• 2003, First Latin American Symposium on Dependable Computing (LADC) in October 21-24, 2003 in Sao Paulo, Brazil, member of the Program Committee [LADC2003]
• 2003-present, International Conference on Information and Intelligent Systems (IIS), member of the Program Committee [IIS2003]
• 2002, 40th ACM SouthEast Regional Conference (ACMSE), To be held in Spring 2002 in Raleigh, NC, General Chair.
• 1996, 1998, 2000, 2002, IEEE International Computer Performance and Dependability Symposium (IPDS), Member of the Program Committee (IPDS'96, IPDS'98, IPDS'2k, IPDS'02) [2002]
• 2000,2001 The International Symposium on Fault-Tolerant Computing (FTCS, now DSN) , member of PC and Fast Abstracts PC [2001]
• IFIP TC2 Working Conference on the Working Conference on "Software Architectures for Scientific Computing Applications,", October 2-4, 2000, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, Member of the Program Committee.
• 1999, 2000, International Software Assurance Certification Conference ( ISACC99, ISACC2000), Member of the Research Track Program Committee.
• 1998-2000, Workshop on Application-Specific Software Engineering and Technology (ASSET), Member of the Program Committee (ASSET'98, ASSET'99, ASSET2000) 1997- present: Member of the Program Committee,
• The 16th IEEE Symposium on Reliable Distributed Systems - SRDS (1997), General Vice-Chair [1997].
• IFIP TC2 Working Conference on the "Quality of Numerical Software," July 1996, Oxford, U.K., Member of the Program Committee.
• IFIP WG 2.5 Workshop on Current Issues in Numerical Software, Organizer, Raleigh, NC, October 1994.
• International Conference on Distributed Computing, 1992, Member of the Program Committee
• Second International Conference on Software Quality - 2ICSQ, Member of the Program Committee, held in RTP, NC, 5-7 October 1992
• 1991-93, ACM South-East Regional Conference, Member of the Steering Committee, Member of the Program Committee, Chair of the 30th Conference (General Chair, Raleigh 1992).
• The IEEE Computer Society's Fourteenth Annual International Computer Software and Applications Conference, COMPSAC90, Member of the Program Committee.
• International Symposium "Computer at the University", organized by SRCE, Zagreb, Croatia, held annually, Editor of the proceedings, also Member of the Organizing Committee. 1980-83.

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