Section Editor's Note A1:

8th SoDIS Symposium

05:01
June 2007

Choon-Tuck Kwan, Auckland University of Technology , New Zealand
ckwan@aut.ac.nz

Kwan, C-T. (2007, Jun), Section Editor's Note: 8th SoDIS Symposium. Bulletin of Applied Computing and Information Technology Vol. 5, Issue 1. ISSN 1176-4120. Retrieved from

A group of academics and practitioners convened at Wellington for the 8th SoDIS (Software Development Impact Statement) Symposium. The aim of the symposium was to enable current and prospective participants in the CITRUS (Centre for Information Technology Research, http://citrus.unitec.ac.nz/ ) and SEPIA (Software Engineering Practice Improvement Alliance) sponsored collaborative research networks to meet and share experiences, materials, practices and plans. Participants in this symposium included industry members and educators from polytechnic and university sectors, both local and overseas. This collection of five papers constitutes the key themes discussed at the symposium.

The first paper by Professor Gotterbarn gives a broad overview of the work accomplished in the year preceding the event. The paper presents the key progress made such as the branding of SoDIS through a trademark application, the adoption of SoDIS as a tool to teach the moral and ethical dimensions of IT project risk assessment in a widening worldwide group of academic institutions. Other exciting developments mentioned include the ongoing case tool software refinement and efforts initiated to push for the commercialisation of the SoDIS risk assessment methodology. The paper ends off with a discussion of the problems faced in securing funding and reaching out to more software developers and organisations to embrace the risk assessment concept and the associated tool.

The second paper by Greig Wakefield, an industry practitioner, describes a milestone in the history of the development of SoDIS. For the first time, practitioners and educators, having seen the potential and value of SoDIS, decided to seriously pursue its commercialisation. The rationale for this and the attendant issues of intellectual property rights, the commercial entityâ€™s governance structure and resourcing are highlighted in the paper.

Closely linked to this commercialisation venture is the certification of SoDIS analysts to give credence to the SoDIS process and to support the commercial adoption of the process. The paper by Leo Hitchcock discusses the range of Industry certification available and posits that certification of SoDIS analysts is appropriate as a means of credentialing for SoDIS.

The next paper “SoDIS meets Accelerating Auckland” by Judith Speight, an industry practitioner, explores how SoDIS might be useful as a means to conduct a preliminary risk assessment audit on a multi-stakeholder project involving representatives from a diverse range of industry, educational and governmental organisations.

The last paper in the section by Krassie Petrova and Rowena Sinclair describes an ongoing project involving an educational implementation of the SoDIS methodology in an undergraduate class. The focus of the work is on the analysis of the impact of information security solutions to the set of stakeholder groups related to a teaching case study.

Copyright © 2007 Choon-Tuck Kwan
The author(s) assign to NACCQ and educational non-profit institutions a non-exclusive licence to use this document for personal use and in courses of instruction provided that the article is used in full and this copyright statement is reproduced. The author(s) also grant a non-exclusive licence to NACCQ to publish this document in full on the World Wide Web (prime sites and mirrors) and in printed form within the Bulletin of Applied Computing and Information Technology. Authors retain their individual intellectual property rights.

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