CS2125 Paper Review Form - Winter 2018

Reviewer:  Or Aharoni

Paper Title: Assurance Based Development of Critical Systems

Author(s): Patrick J. Graydon, John C. Knight, and Elisabeth A. Strunk

1) Is the paper technically correct?
 [x] Yes
 [ ] Mostly (minor flaws, but mostly solid)
 [ ] No

2) Originality
 [ ] Very good (very novel, trailblazing work)
 [x] Good 
 [ ] Marginal (very incremental)
 [ ] Poor (little or nothing that is new)

3) Technical Depth
 [ ] Very good (comparable to best conference papers)
 [x] Good (comparable to typical conference papers)
 [ ] Marginal depth
 [ ] Little or no depth

4) Impact/Significance
 [ ] Very significant
 [x] Significant
 [ ] Marginal significance.
 [ ] Little or no significance.

5) Presentation
 [ ] Very well written
 [x] Generally well written
 [ ] Readable
 [ ] Needs considerable work
 [ ] Unacceptably bad

6) Overall Rating
 [ ] Strong accept (award quality)
 [x] Accept (high quality - would argue for acceptance)
 [ ] Weak Accept (borderline, but lean towards acceptance)
 [ ] Weak Reject (not sure why this paper was published)


7) Summary of the paper's main contribution and rationale
   for your recommendation. (1-2 paragraphs)

The paper's goal is to provide a solution for developing critical 
systems that meet their goals when they are turned on and put in 
production in their expected environments. The authors are looking 
to provide system developers a way to develop their systems as 
complete without having to check the system after the system is 
complete and provide solutions to mistakes after the completions of
the development process. The solution that the authors have provide 
is Assurance Based Development (ABD).

ABD provides developers the ability to develop a critical systems 
and develop the assurance cases that go with these systems at the 
same time. The authors thought out the paper show how a development 
team could provide a complete system that meets the targeted 
requirements of the system. The paper has shown that ABD dose help 
developers make better decisions in the development process and 
documentation that is needed to meet internal and external standards
and the ability to keep checking if the system is running as it was 
planed over time.  


8) List 1-3 strengths of the paper.  (1-2 sentences each,
identified as S1, S2, S3.)

S1 - The paper is dose provide a solution to a problem within system
development. In any system, software, or project that is being developed,
things change and decisions need to be made and ABD does provide a 
solution that would allow developers make decisions as they need. At 
the same time, it provides a guide of what decisions need to be made 
how each decision affect the rest of the development process. 

S2 - Paper does provide the seven criteria that need to be looked at 
when making decisions on the deferent choice for the system. The paper 
has shown that making the decision on these criteria on choices as needed 
has benefits. Provides the ability to look at multiple choices and pick 
the best choice for the system and its overall goals. With more 
experience developers, the amount of choice could be as little as a
single choice.  


9) List 1-3 weaknesses of the paper (1-2 sentences each,
identified as W1, W2, W3.)

W1 - ABD approach is that it relies on a team that has experience 
looking at the problems from multiple views. If there is no one 
that can look at the different choices and their potential affects
than ABD may not help. There has to be a team of people, with 
different experiences, that can work together or a developer that 
has experience developing within the environment that system will 
be implemented.

W2 - The example of the authors choice to present was too large for 
the paper. They were not able to present how the choices they made 
had an influence, since there where many variables. If they would 
have provided a an example with less variables it would have 
strengthened the paper.