SOFTWARE ENGINEERING

Case Studies Of Metaphor Use

 To illustrate how metaphor can be used to foster customer-teammates
communication, we present several case studies of agile projects developed by
students. For each case, the project and the use of metaphor with respect to its
development are described.
Case Study 3.2. Identification of Short Sequence Repetitions
in a DNA Sequence
This aim of this project was to identify short sequence repetitions (SSR) in a
DNA sequence. A graphical interface was provided, and after receiving a DNA
sequence and several parameters about the required repetition, the system was
required to return the following: the basic components of the repeated element,
the number of repetitions of that element in the sequence, the length of the
repeated segment, and the starting position of the segment within the DNA
sequence.
 The students were requested to provide metaphors for the project’s subject.
 In this case, the metaphors were also needed by the lecturer and the assistant in order to
enhance their own understanding of the biological subject. Discussing these metaphors
with groups of students helped the lecturer and the assistant promote their understanding
of the various concepts of the project.

Case Study 3.3. Personal Information Organizer

This project dealt with a personal information organizer that acts as an interface between
the user and different applications that enable access to the user’s personal data. The system
contains a navigator that provides effective data management, and enables the formation of
dependency relationships between different kinds of data, which can be reached by the user
from within different kinds of applications. A uniform format is used for all files in order
to enable dependency relationships.
 A graphic monitor is provided for viewing general virtual vault transactions. In
addition, the monitor enables each user to view personal security information, such
as when and by whom each file was accessed.
 Students were given specific instructions concerning protocols, databases,
programming languages, and development techniques that were to be used in the
implementation of this system.
 During the first planning sessions, after listening to the customer stories, most
students were uncertain about how to think about the file navigator. The customer
emphasized that he was not comfortable with the current tree hierarchy of files,
which he found to be poorly organized.
 According to the client, files were saved in incorrect locations, rendering them
impossible to retrieve. As a result, such files did not undergo automatic
synchronization with other related files.
Case Study 3.4. Simulator Of The Unix File
System Module
 The subject of this project was an educational computer program that
simulates the work of the UnixTM file system module. The system relates to
the following subjects: buffer cache, file system structure of inodes table and
data block, and the superblock for management of available inodes and data
blocks. Each file is represented by an inode in the inodes table, and each
inode contains file details such as owner and permissions, as well as a
pointer to the data blocks that contain the file’s contents. The system has a
graphical interface that enables the user to learn about the file system
structure, perform actual training, read online help, and view running
simulations of UnixTM commands
 The students were asked about the main problems in the software. One of the students
talked about the difficulty of understanding how to implement the inodes table in
general, and about the connection between each inode and the data blocks in particular.
The students discussed this problem and mentioned the metaphors ‘‘an inode is a book
record’’ and ‘‘file data blocks are a book.’’
 The first of these two metaphors, as explained by the students, refers to the situation in
which a specific book is found in a library catalogue. The book record contains details
such as the author and publisher, as well as a pointer to the location of the actual book
in the library. The idea behind the second metaphor was found to be irrelevant as
students continued to discuss it, since file data blocks in UnixTM are not consecutive,
unlike the pages of a book.
 Following this discussion, the students were asked about the contribution of the
discussion to their understanding of the problem and to its solution. Following are the
responses of several students:
 ‘The discussion using the metaphor helped open an additional channel by which to
understand. . . .’’
 ‘‘The metaphor about the catalogue and library shelves illustrated well how a file search is
performed when we know its inode number.’’
 ‘‘The truth is that it helped me personally, since it made me realize that I didn’t really
understand it before.’’
 ‘‘Actually, in the end, we didn’t use the metaphor. . . .’’
 ‘‘The metaphor changed the concepts from being distant to being tangible. . . .’’
 ‘‘I think that had we started this subject with the metaphor we would have understood it
faster.’’
 ‘‘The discussion using the metaphor didn’t contribute to my understanding, but didn’t
bother me either, because I understood the subject even before the discussion. . . .’’
 ‘‘The library idea is perfect, but in my opinion the right metaphor in order to understand . .
. is a family tree. . . .’’