Newsgroups: comp.parallel.mpi
From: ah@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Anna Hondroudakis)
Subject: Questions for project leaders (2nd attempt)
Organization: Department of Computer Science, University of Edinburgh
Date: Sun, 22 Jan 1995 15:42:32 GMT
Message-ID: <D2tCyw.LHo@dcs.ed.ac.uk>


A couple of months ago I posted some questionnaires to this newsgroup. Some of
you have replied to me and I thank you a lot. I am reposting the questionnaires
hoping that more people could help me with these. After this attempt, I will
send a compilation of the answers to all those who have expressed their
interest in them.


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My name is Anna Hondroudakis and I am a PhD student at the department of 
Computer Science of Edinburgh University.

My research is concerned with parallel program performance evaluation and 
visualization tools, or more commonly tuning tools. I am specifically
interested in seeing from a Human Factors point of view the shortcomings
of existing tools and in identifying the needs of the users regarding these 
tools.  I need to see what people do with the tuning tools, e.g, if they use 
them and how and what their observations regarding the tools' usability are.

You would be of great help to my research if you answered some questions that
have been posted as three separate postings.The questions are
addressed to three types of people: People who are parallel program developers,
people who are tool developers and people who are project leaders. In this 
way I try to capture the practices concerning the tools for parallel program 
development from a number of different aspects.
Please, feel free to answer one or more than one set of questions included in
this and in the rest of the postings and send it(them) to my email address: 
ah@dcs.ed.ac.uk. If you are interested in my findings, I will send you a 
summary when a sufficient number of answers are received. 

Thank you very much,


Anna Hondroudakis


QUESTIONS FOR PROJECT LEADERS (2 of 3) (Only a few)


The following questions deal with issues that have to do with the management
of parallel application projects and thus they are addressed to project 
leaders. 


----------------------------->8   cut here  8<---------------------------------

                              QUESTIONNAIRE


Name:  
-----

Email:
-----


A) Could you give some details about the organization you are working for?

Name: 


Aims:






How many people work for this organization?                 [   ]


How many projects have to do with parallel application development?    [   ]
(Please refer to projects that are on-going since 1992 or started after 1992)



B) Could you give a short description about a project of yours in terms of 


Project objective:





How many people work(ed) on this project:                         [  ]


Do the majority of people working on this project have a background in 
computer science?
a) Yes
b) No





Hardware resources used: 




What was (is) the size of the application in lines of code ?       [     ]



What are the languages and development tools that are being (have been) used:





Project started:                          [               ]
Duration of the project:                  [               ]

How much time was devoted in each of the following stages of the software's
life-cycle: (Expressed in w:weeks, m: months, y: years). If the project is on 
going then answer the following question referring to the times you intend to 
spend at each stage.

                    
Specification:  [  ] w/m/y  Design : [  ] w/m/y  Development: [ ] w/m/y 
Debugging:  [ ] w/m/y       Performance evaluation and tuning: [  ]  w/m/y

Is parallel  program performance important for the project? If so, why? 






Did you use any performance evaluation and tuning tool for this project?
(Please name the tool.)



Was the tool that you used developed locally?



How did you find out about it?




Which features of the tool did you find useful ?


If you haven't used any which were the reasons? (Mark where applicable)


[ ]  You didn't know whether a suitable tool existed for your application.

[ ]  You tried to use a tool but it wasn't good enough.

     Please name the tool =	

[ ]  There wasn't a tool portable to your environment. 

[ ]  It was very expensive to obtain.

[ ]  You couldn't afford the time to learn to use it.

[ ]  It was too difficult to use.

[ ]  Performance issues weren't significant.

[ ]  Your approach to parallel program development is based largely on 
     automated techniques.








-- 
===============================================================================
Anna Hondroudakis         Dept. of Computer Science   Edinburgh University
ah@dcs.ed.ac.uk           Tel.  +44 (0)31 650 5115    Fax. +44 (0)31 667 7209
===============================================================================

