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Articulation: Supporting Dynamic Evolution Of Software Engineering Processes

Software process modeling is aimed at understanding and facilitating software development processes. A software process model (SPM) is an abstract representation of a software engineering process. In recent years, SPMs have been proven to be a powerful tool for describing procedural knowledge of software development activities. Enactment of an SPM enables software developers to carry out development activities according to the SPM [DOWSO, MS91a]. As such, the SPM acts as a plan that anticipates types of development activities involved, their performance sequence, and the resources and tools needed to perform them. Software development under the guidance of an SPM becomes an organized execution of the SPM. However, enactment of SPMs fails to handle unexpected events that interrupt software development. This interruption is called a breakdown. A number of empirical studies of software development have revealed both the frequent occurrence of such breakdowns and a recurring type of activity that resolves or mitigate these descriptions [BS87, OSS871. Such breakdowns regularly occur when SPMs are enacted by teams of people who must coordinate and communicate their use of shared development resources [BS89]. This type of resolution or recover activity is called articulation [MS91]. The importance of studying articulation is twofold: from the point view of process enactment, it helps software developers to solve unexpected breakdowns and to continue their tasks; more importantly, from the point view of process modeling, it provides a robust mechanism to accommodate and to dynamically evolve SPMs to a particular engineering environment. This paper outlines a knowledge-based approach to model articulation and dynamic evolution of SPMs during their enactment, which is based on our previous work of software process modeling [MSgO]. At the end, we will briefly discuss the impact of the articulation model on the dynamism of SPMs.