PROMETHEUS - PROcess Model Evolution THrough Experience Unfolded Systematically
PROMETHEUS is a research project aiming to model processes and events, so that the data on each project can be recorded and compared with those of others, despite the fact that each software project is unique.
PROMETHEUS allows an approach integrating data on: process modelling, mamagement of the execution of the processes, the evolution of the processes and the software systems they construct. The approach is based on the collection of data on elementary events, suitably classified and the consequences they have on the processes and products. The process and product measurements are accumulated in the same repository and have semantic homogeneity. These data constitute the elements which construct the information necessary for retrospective analysis of the processes. This information is defined according to the objectives of the analysis and is constructed by means of navigation within the repository.
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The Laboratory's primary areas of work are
The Cleanroom method, which involves incremental development of software under statistical process control, is used in all the Laboratory's development work. Continuous improvement of the Cleanroom process is an objective in all projects.
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The group at LASER are developing process programming technology in the context of a distributed process-centered environment. A process centered environment interprets process programs, using them to coordinate the efforts of people, computers, and software tools. It also provides a platform for the evaluation, comparison, analysis, evolution and improvement of software development processes and their support. Programming software developmen processes will lead to better understanding and improvement of software production, as well as providing more effective computerized support for such processes.
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The quality of software has become one of the keywords of software engineering in the 1990's. Quality is assured by automated measurement and guidance of the software process based on the measures. This project evolves several aspects varying from project management and modelling to single CASE product development tools. As one of the main goals of this project is to develop a flexible environment to assist in implementation and computation of software product metrics.
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Activity at the SEI includes Software Measurement, Software Process Definition, Personal Software Process, Capability Maturity Model (CMM), and Process Improvement.
SEI Document List (pdf format-very large file)
Local Collection of SEI Material
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VTT Electronics has carried out in ProMETRI-project a systematic improvement of the software development process for patient monitoring systems and anaesthesia delivery products with Datex, a member of the Instrumentarium group of companies. The health care products of Datex require extremely high security and quality, and consequently efficient control of the software development process. Similar process improvement co-operation started at spring 1995 also with Instrumentarium Imaging and Nokia Paging. Imaging develops and manufactures diagnostic imaging equipments, Nokia Paging is specialised in pagers.
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Local Collection of ESEG Material
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We have actively participated in a number of research programmes such as the IPSE 2.5 project, part of the UK Government funded Alvey programme, and its successor, the Introduction of Process Technology (IOPT) project. It was this project that spawned our Process Analysis and Design Methodology ( PADM).
Our current primary research focus is the SERC funded Process Engineering Framework (PEF) project, with European collaboration through PROMOTER, under the ESPRIT programme. We are collaborating with Southampton University in the Evolution of Large Software Systems (ELSS) project, and are also associated with Bristol University's PSS in Civil Engineering Design (PSSCED) project.
Local Collection of IPG Material
A List of European Sites for Software Process Activity
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But goal of this project is to study the relationships between these aspects and to develop a new software engineering methodology which integrates those aspects, usually dealt with separately.
The final goal is to develop a conceptual, formal framework that supports the software development and the developers in regard of the above-mentioned aspects. This kind of meta-model of software development, called the 3D-Model of Software Engineering (3DM) can be the conceptual basis for a process- and document-centered software engineering environment.
The 3DM tries to integrate the different aspects of
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E3 offers both a process modeling language (PML) based on classes, association, and inheritance and a supporting tool, called E3 p-draw that supports template creation and reuse. A template is an abstract software process model that describes activity decomposition and sequencing, document format and configurations, tools, and responsibilities. A template does not contain project specific information, e.g., activity starting time or person descriptions.
Local Collection of Material from E3
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This site does not provide a ready link to collections of information, technical reports, or papers regarding their work. The material is available under an individual researcher's page. Not all those listed have massaged their pages into information centers so the hit rate may be very low. For software process information try James Coplien. What may be particularly intriguing with Coplien's work is the merger of process modeling with pattern languages. Definitely worth the trip!
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The SEL mission centers around this basic goal: To continuously improve both our software product and process. To do this, we have developed a three-step approach to understanding the software development process in our environment at GSFC; to assessing the effect of new technologies, tools, and techniques on the process; and to identifying, packaging, and applying successful practices. Working with these steps for nearly 20 years in the SEL, we have formalized this approach to improvement in the SEL Process Improvement Paradigm. The paradigm has supported us in improving our software product and also represents a major contribution to the software engineering discipline. Hence the award from IEEE Computer Society, which recognizes the SEL's achievement and leadership in the field.
Refer to comments written on McGarry, F., R. Pajerski, G. Page, S. Waligora, V. Basili, & M. Zelkowitz (1994) Software Process Improvement in the NASA Software Engineering Laboratory. Technical Report CMU/SEI-94-TR-22, Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, and Basili, V. & S. Green (July 1994) Software Process Evolution at the SEL. IEEE Software. p. 58-66. for further information regarding the particular activities and outcomes and philosophy of this development organization.
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STARS is focused on accelerating a change in the way software is developed within the DoD. This change represents a shift to a megaprogramming paradigm that is process driven, domain specific, reuse based, and technology supported.
STARS Process-Driven Development Papers
Local Holdings of STARS Process Material
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IEEE TCSE Software Process Newsletter
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The center has two major efforts underway related to software process: software architecture and WinWin. The WinWin research project investigates collaborative and concurrent models for requirements engineering and design of complex software systems. Current development efforts in the project is focused on developing tools and environments that support the collaborative activity.
Local Holdings of USCCSE Project Material
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Projects for developing and maintaining software consist of a variety of complex, creative activities. Today, several elementary activities are well-understood (i.e., building compilers). Nevertheless, the interplay of the activities is often neboulous. Development processes have to be documented explicitly to gain intellectual control over software development and maintenance and to improve it.
GoalAlready existing processes are modeled. The models are provided for other projects. During planning the models are nalyzed with respect to the actual context, to determine their properties relevant for the project they are used in. Moreover, the models are used for an automated support during project's life-time. They are interpreted from process engines which are components of so-called process-sensitive software engineering environments. Explicit process models represent on organization's knowledge about software engineering to some extend.
DescriptionExperience gathered in several project throughout the last years led to the definition of MVP-L (Multi-View Process modeling language). MVP-L provides a rich set of elementary process elements. These elements are combined and refined in order to represent real-world processes. This is done by integrating several independent developed views which are described from the roles using MVP-L. Different project members provide information which is used to build a comprehensive software process model.
Current StateSeveral case studies (e.g., at TRW, USA, or Robert Bosch GmbH, Germany) showed the applicability of MVP-L for process improvement. Parallel projects of other research groups supported findings, which demonstrated the usefulness of explicit process models by their mere existance. Currently prototypical tools are developed which support process modelers (i.e., syntax-directed editor, consistency checker, X-based editor). The process models are used for integration with measurment approaches in order to support quality assurance and quality management (see GQM). Tools for detecting similarities and inconsistencies between different views are developed and used for view integration.
Course of ActionCurrently larger examples of software processes are decsribed in MVP-L and implemented in a commercially available process-sensitive software engineering environment later on. Algorithms for analyzing process models are developed in order to allow statements about process features before they are enacted and systems for simulating projects are under development (see Alfred Bröckers). In parallel, an ongoing validation of already existing software process modeling technology is performed in real application development organizations.
Conference and Journal Publications
Technical Reports
Local Material from Kaiserslautern on Software Process
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The software engineering group at CRIM focuses on issues with potentially high pay-off for our industrial partners. First, we need to provide to software development/maintenance organizations the mean to plan, control, evaluate, and improve their development processes. One efficient and precise way to do so is to measure and model software development processes and products. Thus, we can provide an objective and quantitative basis to software engineering. While technological innovations are taking place, the in-depth understanding of all phases of the software life cycle, their interrelationships, and the impact of the technology choices on each software development activity still constitutes a major obstacle to overcome. The development of tools allowing for process modelling and for the design of effective processes that are adapted to the needs and context of individual enterprises remains a key challenge for the years ahead.
CRIM plays a special role in software engineering within its environment; the Centre is the ideal site for mobilizing the best industry and university resources to advance the science and meet the demands of members who require breakthroughs in software development. Precompetitive research at CRIM focuses on the following areas :
The Software Engineering Research Laboratory (SERL) is part of the Computer Science Department at the University of Colorado. The focus of our research is in global software engineering, and consequently in each of our research topics our work focuses on the wide-area software development and deployment context.
The current (12/03/96) listing of projects includes several that focus on software process. Process research in SERL encompasses both the empirical analysis of processes, and investigation of system infrastructure for process automation. Empirical analysis research has been investigating and developing methods for using collected process event data to better understand and analyze a process. System infrastructure research has looked at methods for bridging disparate process systems, and applied virtual environments to process automation.
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The main purpose of the Institute is to provide a focus in Queensland for expertise in software quality and to serve as a catalyst for innovations in software quality techniques. It is engaged in a program of action research with the local software industry and in basic research focused on rigorous computer-assisted program development. The Institute provides consulting and professional support to industry on setting up and managing software quality systems and on using national and international software standards. It has established specialist graduate training in software quality techniques and offers short courses on specialist topics as part of professional development programs.
This site contains conference calendar and local publications that may be valuable. This is a major source for SPICE related information and contacts.
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To ensure the very highest quality of products and services - in other words, to make sure we do business with the best suppliers - Bell Canada, Bell-Northern Research and NORTEL created the Trillium model. This model is essentially an extensive checklist that enables organizations to rate and select suppliers of complex telecommunications products.
More precisely, Trillium is a benchmark of the best industry practices for the development and support of software products. It incorporates the requirements of Software Engineering Institute Capability Maturity Model version 1.1, ISO9001 and ISO9000-3 and other standards.
The Trillium model covers all aspects of the software development life-cycle, most system, product development and support activities, and a significant number of related marketing activities. Although Trillium has been designed for embedded software systems, such as telecommunications systems, much of the model can be applied to other segments of the software industry, such as Management Information Systems (MIS), and hardware development.
Trillium is used by Bell Canada to assess the product development and support capability of prospective and existing suppliers of telecommunications or information technology-based products. Trillium can also be used as a reference benchmark in an internal capability improvement program.
Trillium is the result of a partnering project between Bell Canada, Northern Telecom and Bell-Northern Research.
Trillium documentation as HTML File
Trillium documentation as PDF file.
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Coo is mainly based on a formally defined cooperative transaction model that uses software process models to surpass the limits of traditional transaction models, so as to allow cooperation between the sofware developers while ensuring the consistence of the development.
The implementation of Coo is based on P-RooT, a software engineering database prototype. P-RooT is an object oriented extension of PCTE that allow procedural attachment to PCTE objects and thus provide an object-oriented interface to PCTE object bases.
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The IIT Software Engineering Group performs research and development in software engineering. Software engineering is taken to mean all the practical aspects of developing and supporting software, from project initiation through first delivery, maintenance, and evolution. The objective of the research is to develop tools and techniques to assist Canadian companies whose principal product is software to improve their processes and products. Collaboration with companies who can use or commercialize such tools and techniques is emphasized.
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The EFoCS research group in the Department of Computer Science was set up in the summer of 1992 and is currently composed of 4 permanent lecturing staff and two PhD students (one EPSRC funded and the other Univeristy Funded).
The group formed as a result of shared concern regarding the lack of sound empirical studies in various areas of Computer Science, particularly Software Engineering. The discipline of Software Engineering is populated with a variety of technologies addressing different stages of the life-cycle.
What constitutes good and bad practice across all these technologies is largely debated at an intuitive level and influenced strongly by market forces and the opinions of "gurus", rather than being underpinned by solid empirical foundations and substantiated by experimental science. Furthermore, the empirical work that does exist to date either lacks scientific rigour or is too ad hoc to be of general value.
EFoCS is interested in examining the scientific rigour underpinning the host of methods and techniques that make up Software Engineering. Much of the work we are interested in doing is empirically based As well as performing novel experiments, EFoCS is also concerned with replicating experiments performed elsewhere.
The group is not alone in its investigations. It is a member of ISERN (the International Software Engineering Research Network) which states, as part of its purpose: "Software engineering is a relatively new and immature discipline. In order to mature, we need to adopt an experimental view of research allowing us to observe and experiment with technologies, understand their weaknesses and strengths, tailor technologies to the goals and characteristics of particular projects, and package them together with empirically gained experience to enhance their reuse potential in future projects."
Locally Held Material from EFoCSIRUS, the Irvine Research Unit in Software, is an alliance of applied research and technology partnerships between academia and industry focused on advancing the state-of-the-art and state-of-the-practice in software production. IRUS was established in recognition of the software industry's critical importance to California's economic competitiveness. IRUS strives to enhance abilities to design, produce, assess, and maintain diverse types of software through cooperative problem-solving and information and experience sharing. Research and technical emphases of IRUS include software processes and process improvement, computer-supported cooperative work, human computer interaction, user interface software, analysis and testing, metrics and measurement, and software understanding.
The Teamware project is directed at providing support to teams of engineers engaged in cooperative software development tasks. The support is keyed on project control and coordination. Project control includes specifying the desired team process, assessing current project status relative to the desired process, and enabling modifications to the process to meet new needs. Coordination includes technology to support communication, resource allocation and sharing, and artifact routing and access. Teamware supports these goals through provision of a language for describing processes and a system for enabling process execution. The language has graph-based control semantics combined with an object-oriented model that supports customization and process fragment reuse. A graphical user interface enables non-technical managers to perform process modification and specialization within a domain.
Locally Held Material from UCIEuropean Software Institute is a major initiative, founded by leading European companies, to improve the competitiveness in the European Software Industry, including both suppliers and users. To this end ESI promotes and disseminates good software management practices. The European Software Institute is supported by the European Commission and the Basque Government.
This site provides wealth of information. Included are links to reports, products, publications, technologies. Those involved are working diligently to explore the issues related to developing quality systems, and provide an information repository regarding best practices and validating same. Should be visited often as it seems to be updated with regularity.
BootCheck main objective is to support the European software industry and build awareness of the benefits of software process assessment and improvement. BootCheck focuses on the organisation's processes and allows companies to self-assess their software capability and use this information as a basis for improvement. A second aim is to produce aggregated data at a European level to enable comparisons of maturity levels to be made for benchmarking purposes.
ESI is spearheading a European Commission initiative to open up China's growing software market to European software producers. This is one of the different initiatives that the European Commission is launching to reinforce co-operation between European and Chinese private operators. The purpose of this project is to help a number of European software developing organisations to establish profitable co-operation with organisations in China, record and analyse the subsequent experiences/lessons learnt and disseminate these to the wider European industry.
This project comprises two initiatives: a Software Excellence Survey and a Self-Diagnostic tool.The purpose of the Software Excellence Survey is to collect and disseminate information about management attitudes to all aspects of the software activities carried out in their organisations. The questionnaire is based on INSEAD's well established and highly regarded `Manufacturing Futures Survey' and is inspired by the SPICE framework. The primary purpose of the Self-Diagnostic tool is to enable individual software producing units to make quantified assessments of their capabilities, and to use those assessments as key elements in programmes of continuous improvement.
ROADS main goal is the controlled realization of four industrial-scale reuse introduction experiments in four different Thomson-CSF Business Units and some of its affiliated organisations. Two existing and complementary reuse methodologies will be combined and employed in the experiments. The first one is the Software Productivity Consortium (SPC) approach, called Synthesis which is mainly focused on domain engineering features and thus appropriate to support product-line based software reuse. The second is the REBOOT approach, developed as part of a ESPRIT project and currently marketed by Transtar. REBOOT takes a component library approach, focusing on re-engineering for reuse of existing legacy code and provides only partial support to domain engineering activities.
SPICE is a major international initiative to develop a Standard for Software Process Assessment. The project is carried out under the auspices of the International Committee on Software Engineering Standards ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 7, through its Working Group on Software Process Assessment (WG 10).Since 1993, the SPICE (Software Process Improvement and Capability dEtermination) project, launched within the International Standards Organisation (ISO) has been developing a framework standard for software process assessment, bringing together the major suppliers and users of assessment methods. Field trials of SPICE-based assessment commenced in January 1995.
The European Software Institute has the competence to lead companies to levels of increased maturity in producing and applying IT-systems and creates awareness about the major issues of software and software processes as a first step, to reach the high goal of being a successful IT-business company. ESI's VISTA-LAB is an exhibition demonstrator which provides for an easy to perceive virtual reality information landscape by relating the complicated properties of software products and processes to well known paradigms of architectural engineering.
GURU (GUide to ReUse economics) is a tool that supports reuse investment planning and, in particular, it helps in quantifying the benefits that can be expected from an investment in reuse. GURU has been designed to support both the reuse adoption planning and monitoring, by evaluating alternative reuse strategies from an economic perspective and by analysing actual results with respect to expected ones.
All ESSI improvement projects are reviewed, categorised and added continuously to the VASIE repository for dissemination. The main goal of this process is to create a wider structure called Best Practice Repository that will contain a set of validated best practices on software, derived from improvement experiments. They have instituted a PIE repository within VASIE (PIE is process improvement experiment). This repository provides a convenient search facility.
See - as a source for material on projects supported by ESSI (European Systems and Software Initiative).
[Page Menu] [Bibliographies] [Process Ed] [Standards] [Resources]EPOS (Expert System for Program and ("og") System Development) is a SEE (Software Engineering Environment) with emphasis on Process Modelling, Software Configuration Management and support to cooperative work. The rationale of our scientific initiative is the improvement of software quality by better process support for (software) production processes.
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The Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering (IESE) advances the state-of-the-art in many fields of software engineering reflecting industrial needs. Fraunhofer IESE supports industrial firms in building up competences in best software engineering practices customized to their specific needs. It, thereby, bridges the gap between basic research and industrial practice in both directions. We invite you to inform yourself about the Fraunhofer IESE, its current research fields as well as projects and services. In additon, general information about means of cooperation, publication and announcements are available.
[Page Menu] [Bibliographies] [Process Ed] [Standards] [Resources]Product configuration research at Helsinki University of Technology is part of long term information technology research on industrial products. It is one of the main fields of the Product Data Management Group lead by professor Reijo Sulonen. The group also works on engineering document management and management and improvement of processes.
The goal of the process modelling work is to provide a common framework to cope with the whole variety of different processes. The following processes are studied: newspaper prepress department, logistics processes, engineering change management, software engineering. Members of the group are Reijo Sulonen (leader) and 3 graduate students.
[Page Menu] [Bibliographies] [Process Ed] [Standards] [Resources]There are two projects in process technology here that deserve watching:
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SYSLAB is conducting research within the areas of Information Systems, Databases, and Software Engineering. Current projects and publications indicate interest in software metrics and process modeling.
[Page Menu] [Bibliographies] [Process Ed] [Standards] [Resources]SETL personnel evaluate programming environments and software engineering tools, and conduct experiments to test the effectiveness of software development methods. Some of the tools developed as a result of this research are available via anonymous ftp.
Our focus is on Automated Software Quality Assessment. Major research areas include, but are not limited to:
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From its inception CSE has identified software process improvement (SPI) as a priority area, and we are the designated national focus for information and assistance in software quality and process improvement within the Irish state support infrastructure.
CSE's track record in support of SPI is second to none, and has included the following initiatives in previous years:
CSE will continue to bring world class SPI services to Irish companies, building on this track record.
They maintain write-ups regarding their work with industrial partners in SPI.
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CCC is a Finnish software company founded in 1985. Our company is located in Oulu, Finland.
CCC has over 100 professionals to provide superior know-how and expertise. The high standards of our project operations mean reliability and quality even in the most demanding business environments. We use the most sophisticated tools and methods. We rely on the best and most successful hardware and software architecture.
DriveSPI aims at producing and validating through large applications a European framework for improving the software process maturity with a strong emphasis on risk management. Such an integration of risk management within process improvement concerns is recognized by the software community as being a major challenge for the next years.
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Their research focus is applying system dynamic modeling to explore software development practices. They build simulations that allow the exploration of these models, thereby helping understand the nature of interactions and to evaluate choices under an improvement paradigm.
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Quality and productivity of software are the most important issues in the software industry today. The prime purpose of this research is to specify and test effective procedures for software quality engineering. Methods and tools for rigourous determination of the quality of software and the productivity of the software process are investigated in order to develop mission focussed improvement procedures.
The activities are focussed on
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The objective of the CSL is to combine research specialties found in Industrial Engineering with those found in Computer Science to create intelligent systems. Researchers from Industrial Engineering concentrate mainly on answering the quations: What is knowledge? How do you acquire knowledge? Can you effectively use neural networks to acquire knowledge? How do you build a human/computer interface? How do you add computer vision to a knowledge based system? How do you immplement knowledge based simulation for manufacturing?
Researchers from Computer Science concentrate mainly on answering the questions: How do you mechanize knowledge representation, transfer, and sharing? What are characteristics of expert system building tools and how can they best be used to improve software productivity and quality? How can you improve the software life cycle process through the use of intelligent systems, models, and metrics? How can fuzzy logic and distributed knowledge bases be used to create complex knowledge based systems? Together the researchers from both departments design and build knowledge based systems. The CSL currently supports research in four program areas.
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The Mission of the Software Engineering Management Research Laboratory is to develop, for our software engineering industry, the analytical models and measurements instruments to enable them to improve their decision-making processes in order to meet their business objectives.
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Comments should be sent to
Richard Upchurch (rupchurch@umassd.edu)
This document
Created: March 8, 1996 by RLU
Modified: October 18, 1998