Research On A Process Reuse Framework And Related Techniques

The software has become more and more complex. More and more software organizations hope to improve the capability maturity by the mean of software process. The reuse of software process is an effective method to improve the capability maturity. The traditional PSEEs (Process-centered Software Engineering Environment) always use formalized process modeling methods, and apply process engines to implement the process. These methods heavily rely on the knowledge of the process maker and lack flexibility, which limits their practical application. The thesis proposes a process reuse framework based on Gantt and investigates its key techniques. The overall research effort is broken down to a set of detailed research work as follows:Aiming at the status quo of the small- and medium-sized software organizations in China, the thesis offers a process reuse framework which is easy to implement. The framework can be divided into two parts: process definition and process establishing. The former includes the description and storage of the process, and the later includes the implementation and improvement of the process. The structure of the framework is clear and integrated. The framework can effectively help the small-sized or medium-sized software organizations satisfy the requirements of process focus and definition in CMM level 3, and build a firm foundation for quantitative process management and process change management in higher CMM levels.A graphic process definition approach is provided by this research. The definition of process is the base of process reuse. The traditional process definition methods usually use formalized methods such as process program design method and Petri net based method. All these formalized methods can express the processes accurately and provide convenience for the process execution, while they are difficult to use and lack flexibility. So a graphic process definition method is offered in the paper, which is activity-centered. Many process factors are built in the activities as their attributes, and the relationship between activities is restricted as the time relationship. So the element types and relations are simplified and the process definition is simple and easy to use.Gantt is adopted as the form of process instances because it is a kind of widely used process plan and schedule management tool. Furthermore, a corresponding approach based on a series of mapping rules is proposed to translate the process description into Gantt automatically, which enhance the feasibility and efficiency of the proposed process reuse method.The framework has already been implemented in the 863 project "Software process technique and quality assurance platform". Its successful tryout and application in many software organizations shows that the proposed work has practical worth and provides a valuable reference for the process reuse and improvement.