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his understanding of the seven tax law tests. However, in his
rebuttal report and at trial, he expressed reservations as to
whether the Cyborg Payroll project so qualified. When asked to
rank the eight activities from most to least characteristic of
research, Dr. McDermott provided the following list: Success and
SBS; Trust TU; MoneyNet, Trust Payment, and General Ledger; Debit
Card; and finally Cyborg Payroll.
Dr. McDermott summarized his general findings as follows:
There is usually little room for debate about whether a
project passes tests T4 and T7, having to do with
"improved business component" and commercial
availability. The main goal of most projects was a piece
of software that automated a process that was previously
done by hand, or that did essentially the same job as an
earlier piece of software, but had more features and
better performance. Even when the project failed, a goal
of this kind was usually clearly present and explicitly
stated. As far as commercial availability is concerned,
I was impressed by how thoroughly Norwest searched for
commercial products, proceeding to develop software
internally only when it had to, and usually by beginning
with a commercial product and adding functions to it that
were crucial to the banking business. * * *
Another criterion that is usually met fairly easily is
T3, the use of a process of experimentation, involving
the development and testing of hypotheses. There was
always some process of experimentation involved in the
eight sample projects. The process was generally not as
systematic as one would find in a physics or chemistry
lab. I think that reflects the state of practice in
computer science, where effects are usually less subtle
than in physics, and require less rigorous experimental
methodology.
* * * * * * *
For these eight projects, it is clear that there was a
process of experimentation to reduce significant
computer-science uncertainties in every case. There are
some areas of uncertainty that were not involved in any
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