Adaptive Software Process Modelling with SOCCA and PARADIGM

Abstract:
One of the unsolved problems in the world of software process modelling is the question of formally incorporating change of a software process in the very model. To elucidate this problem and possibly solve it, the following approach has been chosen. In a standard case, the so-called ISPW-7 example, is change a part of the described problem situation. The purpose is that all, or many, existing software process modelling methodologies incorporate this change in their model for the ISPW-7 case. This hopefully leads to a better understanding of a general approach to model change.

In the ISPW-7 example has the process change been split up into two parts. One part addresses some form of permanent evolution of a process, this is called `process modification'. The other part addresses a temporary modification of the behaviour of the process, this is called `process exception'.

One of the existing software process modelling methodologies is SOCCA, which is currently still under development at the University of Leiden, department of Computer Science. This thesis concentrates on the topic of formally incorporating process change in the SOCCA methodology. First, SOCCA has been extended with some new concepts to make it possible to model process change and secondly, this extended version of SOCCA has been applied to the ISPW-7 example. As it turns out, it is possible to model both the process modification part as the process exception part of the ISPW-7 example with aid of the new concepts introduced in this thesis.