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Evolution

Software engineering approaches often concentrate on initial software development and not on the continual evolution of the software and its environment. Software is continually changing and evolving, not only because of the discovery of latent errors, but primarily because of changes in the operating environment, in the needs of the end users, and in the underlying technology. We believe that software must be designed to be changeable without compromising the confidence in the properties that were initially verified. Sometimes decisions will have to be made not to change critical software if the risk is unwarranted. We need ways to make those decisions, ways to design and construct software so that it can evolve over time without compromising critical properties, and techniques to aid in the evolution and change process itself.



Jeannette Wing
Wed Apr 17 09:16:52 EDT 1996