Des Greer photo

Teaching

I am currently looking after the Level 3 Final Year CS Proejcts in CSC3002 and delivering the Level 3 course Software Design Principles, Patterns and Practice (CSC3031).

 
Research

Areas of Interest: Software Requirements, Software Refactoring, Software Evolution Planning; Software Risk Management; Software Adaptivity

My research tends to be in an empirical based context and I represent QUB in the International Software Engineering Research Network (ISERN) Thus there is an underpinning philosophy that software engineering research should be carried out in an experimental context (see the ISERN Manifesto).

My interests include Software Change and its management. To date this has included work on Risk Management, Software Refactoring and Software Requirements Volatility.

I also have long standing interest in software planning, particularly release planning. Release planning is about deciding what to release to customers and when, where you have many stakeholders but resource, budget and time constraints. On top of those there are as dependencies between requirements. Overall this becomes a complex optimisation problem.

There are other problems too, like getting the architecture right in the early stages and then there is the problem of how to manage risk. You want to maximise value early on, but not to ignore risk mission critical risks. Previous work has used Search based Software Engineering approaches. Other interests include agile methods, software evolution, software design patterns.

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Collaboration

Collaborative Research/ Empirical Research - If you are interested in a getting data from a software project or product and using that to investigate best practices or approaches, consider collaborating with our SE Research Team at QUB. We have expertise in Case Studies, Surveys, Literature Reviews, Repository Mining etc. Another interest is in automated refactoring - improving quality by restructuring code and a growing interest in Blockchain architecures and applications.

Knowledge Transfer - KTP and Fusion projects involve a partnership between a company (in NI and Rep Ireland respectively) and QUB. A project is created that has synergy between QUB and the company. The company  can use the skills and expertise at QUB and at the same time as gaining a highly qualified graduate to work full time in the company.  KTP projects are part-funded by a government grant. I have two ongoing at teh moment:EventMap on Multi-Objective Search Based Optimisation for Training and Linden Foods on Food Traceability using Blockchain

 

Research, Training and Consultancy  - If you have an interesting problem (e.g. in the areas of refactoring, requirements management, release planning, change/risk management, design patterns, software architecture or software economics) and want to collaborate please contact me at des.greer (at) qub.ac.uk.

 

PhD Projects

Current:

  • Nurfauza Jali - Visual Automation Of Natural Language Specifications To Dynamic Software Models
  • Tao Wang - Data driven aggregation methods for Fuzzy Systems
  • Aidan McGowan - The Use of Innovative Technologies to Better Understand Learning Behaviours (2nd supervisor)
  • Qiao Peng - Mapping Financial Data Mining Based on Machine Learning(3rd supervisor)

 

Completed

  • Michael Mohan - Automated Refactoring Of Software
  • Stefan Kraft - Performance Models of Contention in Shared Environments
  • Sharon McGee - Software Requirements Change Analysis and Prediction
  • Edzreena Odzaly - Managing Software Risk in Agile Projects
  • Ulrich Winkler - A Framework for Process-Centric Business Continuity Management
  • Liang Xiao - The Adaptive Agent Model

 

Proposals

  • There may be some projects currently available, subject to funding

    "Requirements to Microservices" details of which can be found on the EEECS web pages .

    There may be other opportunities, so please contact me at des.greer(at)qub.ac.uk to discuss possible areas of studies. Suitable topics include: Requirements planning, Software Design Patterns, Software Architecture, Software change management, Risk Management, Agile Methods.