An Approach to Software Process Design and Implementation Using Transition Rules

Abstract

When software organizations adopt several best practices models into one single environment the number of activities and processes tends to increase. Managing effectively a large and complex system of processes requires process modeling capabilities at higher levels of abstraction. This paper presents a modeling approach for software process design and implementation to deal with the increasing size and complexity of large systems of processes. A model based on an extension of UML 2.0 Component Diagrams is used to develop a process architecture. A transition mechanism using Little-JIL process programming language is also proposed to support the refinement of a process architecture to a process implementation. Software Process Modeling; Software Process Architecture; Multi-model Environemtns; Little-JIL

Software process modeling languages: A systematic literature review

“…There was a lack in SPEM because it covered a rather coarse description of processes behavior. Support for a more finegrained behavior model and life-cycle modeling was missing The authors tried to cover the limitations of OMG SPEM 1.1 regarding architectural concepts for software process modeling based on software architectures 2011 Ellner et al [30] OMG's FUML The paper proposes a FUML-based distributed execution machine for enacting software process models FUML was insufficient to execute software process models to drive realistic projects with large and geographically spread teams 2011 Ferreira [32] UML The paper is a modeling approach for software process design and implementation dealing with increasing the size and complexity of large process systems There was no proposal regarding the incremental size and complexity of processes 2011 vSPEM [45] [46] SPEM 2.0 The paper proposes a language that models variability in software processes…”

“…To document processes in order to improve communication among people in real situations [49] To manage knowledge in a large software development organization [50] To provide a high-level representation to non-experts, so that it can be easy to use [24] To provide an adequate process representation that is vital for software organizations: understandable for people and formalized to avoid ambiguity [49] To define, verify and validate an organization's process [38] To create a formalism to represent and exchange software processes [21] To extend the abstraction level to improve model understandability and reduce model maintenance effort [38] To allow software process analysis and simulation [52] To control the human participation in software development activities [43,53] To support a more fine-grained behavior model and life cycle modeling [31] To model a process that integrates engineering and management practices [50] To exchange and subcontract results and components [50,52] To reuse software processes [24,37,55,56,58] To validate a process before enactment [15,16] To facilitate software process management automation [43,53] To apply the idea of software product lines to software processes [57] To include architectural concepts in software process modeling [14] To model controlled flexibility in software process [47] To deal with the increasing size and complexity of large systems of processes [32] To support software process tailoring to meet the specific goals and characteristics demanded by organizations and projects [45,46] Existing MDA tools are focused on code generation but other activities in a software process are usually not considered [44] To achieve integration of MBE into system and software process models [41] To support enactment by exploiting the full potenti...…”

POEML: a Process Orchestration, Execution, and Modeling Language

“…Ferreira et al's proposal 86 consists of a UML‐based modeling language (extending UML component diagram) and a set of model‐to‐text transformation rules to transform the process models into executable code. This code is implemented in Little‐JIL 87 and can be deployed and executed in an execution engine.…”

Characterizing and evaluating the quality of software process modeling language: Comparison of ten representative model-based languages

“…Ferreira et al proposes an approach for software process modelling [81] extending UML Component Diagrams (UML-CPD). Authors consider that developing a process model should entail developing phases of process design and process implementation.…”

“…These process modules represent specific tasks within the workflow. Moreover, the Ferreira's metamodel described in [81] does not include supporting for exception flow, data flow or resources modelling.…”