Simon

Abstract

The structure of the coupling relation on design decisions is a key factor influencing the evolvability properties and the economic value of a design. The work of Baldwin and Clark is an important step toward a theory of the relationship between structure and value. A key step to enabling rigorous validation and perhaps the eventual use of their ideas for software engineering is formalization of their model. In this paper, we present a brief overview of such a formal model and a prototype software tool, Simon, implementing it. We present Simon's functions for deriving design structure matrices and computing impacts of changes in design decisions, and we sketch an initial experimental evaluation in the form of a replication study of our earlier analysis of Parnas's 1972 paper on information hiding modularity.