Software Process Definition And Management

The concept of processes is at the heart of software and systems engineering. Software process models integrate software engineering methods and techniques and are the basis for managing large-scale software and IT projects. High product quality routinely results from high process quality. Software process management deals with getting and maintaining control over processes and their evolution. Becoming acquainted with existing software process models is not enough, though. It is important to understand how to select, define, manage, deploy, evaluate, and systematically evolve software process models so that they suitably address the problems, applications, and environments to which they are applied. Providing basic knowledge for these important tasks is the main goal of this textbook. Münch and his co-authors aim at providing knowledge that enables readers to develop useful process models that are suitable for their own purposes. They start with the basic concepts. Subsequently, existing representative process models are introduced, followed by a description of how to create individual models and the necessary means for doing so (i.e., notations and tools). Lastly, different possible usage scenarios for process management are highlighted (e.g. process improvement and software process simulation). Their book is aimed at students and researchers working on software project management, software quality assurance, and software measurement; and at practitioners who are interested in process definition and management for developing, maintaining, and operating software-intensive systems and services.

"While it is usually helpful to launch improvement programs, many such programs soon get bogged down in detail. They either address the wrong problems, or they keep beating on the same solutions, wondering why things don't improve. This is when you need an objective way to look at the problems. This is the time to get some data." Watts S. Humphrey, from the Foreword This book, drawing on work done at the Software Engineering Institute and other organizations, shows how to use measurements to manage and improve software processes. The authors explain specifically how quality characteristics of software products and processes can be quantified, plotted, and analyzed so the performance of software development activities can be predicted, controlled, and guided to achieve both business and technical goals. The measurement methods presented, based on the principles of statistical quality control, are illuminated by application examples taken from industry. Although many of the methods discussed are applicable to individual projects, the book's primary focus is on the steps software development organizations can take toward broad-reaching, long-term success. The book particularly addresses the needs of software managers and practitioners who have already set up some kind of basic measurement process and are ready to take the next step by collecting and analyzing software data as a basis for making process decisions and predicting process performance. Highlights of the book include: Insight into developing a clear framework for measuring process behavior Discussions of process performance, stability, compliance, capability, and improvement Explanations of what you want to measure (and why) and instructions on how to collect your data Step-by-step guidance on how to get started using statistical process control If you have responsibilities for product quality or process performance and you are ready to use measurements to manage, control, and predict your software processes, this book will be an invaluable resource.

Over the past decade, there has been an increase in attention and focus on the discipline of software engineering. Software engineering tools and techniques have been developed to gain more predictable quality improvement results. Process standards such as Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI), ISO 9000, Software Process Improvement and Capability dEtermination (SPICE), Agile Methodologies, and others have been proposed to assist organizations to achieve more predictable results by incorporating these proven standards and procedures into their software process. Software Process Improvement and Management: Approaches and Tools for Practical Development offers the latest research and case studies on software engineering and development. The production of new process standards assist organizations and software engineers in adding a measure of predictability to the software process. Companies can gain a decisive competitive advantage by applying these new and theoretical methodologies in real-world scenarios. Researchers, scholars, practitioners, students, and anyone interested in the field of software development and design should access this book as a major compendium of the latest research in the field.

Software engineering is playing an increasingly significant role in computing and informatics, necessitated by the complexities inherent in large-scale software development. To deal with these difficulties, the conventional life-cycle approaches to software engineering are now giving way to the "process system" approach, encompassing development methods, infrastructure, organization, and management. Until now, however, no book fully addressed process-based software engineering or set forth a fundamental theory and framework of software engineering processes. Software Engineering Processes: Principles and Applications does just that. Within a unified framework, this book presents a comparative analysis of current process models and formally describes their algorithms. It systematically enables comparison between current models, avoidance of ambiguity in application, and simplification of manipulation for practitioners. The authors address a broad range of topics within process-based software engineering and the fundamental theories and philosophies behind them. They develop a software engineering process reference model (SEPRM) to show how to solve the problems of different process domains, orientations, structures, taxonomies, and methods. They derive a set of process benchmarks-based on a series of international surveys-that support validation of the SEPRM model. Based on their SEPRM model and the unified process theory, they demonstrate that current process models can be integrated and their assessment results can be transformed between each other. Software development is no longer just a black art or laboratory activity. It is an industrialized process that requires the skills not just of programmers, but of organization and project managers and quality assurance specialists. Software Engineering Processes: Principles and Applications is the key to understanding, using, and improving upon effective engineering procedures for software development.

The author, drawing on years of experience at IBM and the SEI, provides here practical guidance for improving the software development and maintenance process. He focuses on understanding and managing the software process because this is where he feels organizations now encounter the most serious problems, and where he feels there is the best opportunity for significant improvement. Both program managers and practicing programmers, whether working on small programs or large-scale projects, will learn how good their own software process is, how they can make their process better, and where they need to begin. "This book will help you move beyond the turning point, or crisis, of feeling over-whelmed by the task of managing the software process to understanding what is essential in software management and what you can do about it." Peter Freeman, from the Foreword 0201180952B04062001

Over the years, a variety of software process models have been designed to structure, describe and prescribe the software systems construction process. More recently, software process modelling is increasingly dealing with new challenges raised by the tests that the software industry has to face.This book addresses these new trends in software process modeling related to: ? Processes for open source software;? Systems dynamics to model and simulate the software process;? Peopleware: the importance of people in the software development and by extension in the software process.One new software development trend is the development of open source projects. As such projects are a recent creation, the process model governing this type of developments is unfamiliar. This book deals with process modeling for open source software. It also deals with software process simulation applied to the management of software projects and improves the software development process capability according to CMM (Capability Maturity Model).Software development is a conjunction of: the organizational environment, the social environment and the technological environment. The inclusion of these environments will make it possible to output software process models that meet the specified organizational, cultural and technological requirements, providing an exhaustive analysis of the people in the software process, as well as supporting people-oriented software development. This book deals with the development of software by means of people-oriented process models that have proven to be very beneficial

Practical Support for Lean Six Sigma Software Process Definition: Using IEEE Software Engineering Standards addresses the task of meeting the specific documentation requirements in support of Lean Six Sigma. This book provides a set of templates supporting the documentation required for basic software project control and management and covers the integration of these templates for their entire product development life cycle. Find detailed documentation guidance in the form of organizational policy descriptions, integrated set of deployable document templates, artifacts required in support of assessment, organizational delineation of process documentation.