Support Process Management

• Develop a project-specific software process to accommodate the attributes of a particular project, such as its product, or organizational environment.

  The MVP-L notation allowed the instantiation of processes to add project-specific details. For example, in phase one we were able to define our Certification of Assets process definition generically, and then instantiate the model to add project specific details, such as total number of man-hours available. APPL/A also allowed instantiation using Ada generics.

• Reason about attributes of software creation or evolution. MVP-L allows the definition of attribute models. These attribute models can then be used to define attributes of processes and products. For example, we defined an attribute for the state of an asset submitted for reuse. This attribute holds the asset status, and can contain any one of ``submitted'', ``accepted'', ``documented'', ``validated'', or ``loaded''. APPL/A also allows attribute definition through Ada variable declarations.

• Support development of plans for the project (forecasting). We did not evaluate this goal in our study.

• Monitor, manage, and coordinate the process. We did not evaluate this goal in our study.

• Provide a basis for process measurement, such as definition of measurement points within the context of a specific process. MVP-L allows attribute definitions for processes and products. These attributes may include measurement attributes. For example, in our study, we created an ``effort'' attribute for all processes. This attribute held the total number of man-days of effort spent in performing the process. APPL/A contains more complete process measurement capabilities through the use of a tool called Amadeus [13]. This tool allows the definition of specific occurrences that trigger the collection of data. The tool can be run simultaneously with APPL/A code to allow the collection of measurement data during process execution. We were not able to explore use of the Amadeus tool during our study.