Software Process Models

Context: Software Process Improvement (SPI) is among the most effective ways to improve the quality of software products and services. Despite many research and industrial reports, SPI planning and implementation in Multi-Model Environments (MMEs) still face various issues and difficulties which increase the risk of failure especially for Small and Medium size Enterprises (SMEs). As a popular approach, harmonization techniques are used to meet the MME's specific issues through recognizing the common or similar areas among the implemented models and developing an integrated solution for quality improvement throughout the organization.
Objective:This paper has two main objectives: (1) recognizing the set of most popular models used in worldwide harmonization projects and implemented or requested by Iranian software SMEs. (2) Comparing and integrating these models in Process Activity level to develop a unified quality improvement model.
Method: A combination of literature review and questionnaire methods was used to identify the set of the most popular models. Then, based on harmonization techniques the common or similar areas among these models are recognized and then an initial version of the Unified Quality Improvement Model (UQIM) is developed, named CIP-UQIM. Next, this initial model was presented in a two-day workshop for SPI experts and it was refined and finalized by incorporating their feedbacks.
Results: Investigations showed that the set {CMMI-DEV, ISO 9001, and PMBOK} was the most popular. Thus in CIP-UQIM, for the first time, the last version of these models was unified at the activity level details. Finally, the experience of using CIP-UQIM in an Iranian SME has been reported which demonstrate its applicability and advantages.
Conclusion: Considering the high similarity among the three models and CIP-UQIM level of details, it can be concluded that CIP-UQIM can be beneficial to resolve or reduce SPI issues in MME's, especially in case of software SMEs.

Keywords: Software Process Improvement; Multi-Model Harmonization; Small and Medium sized Enterprise; CMMI-DEV 1.3; ISO 9001:2008; PMBOK 5.

Nowadays, every vendor and IT service provider wants to switch into a cloud environment for better Quality of Service (QoS), Scalability, Performance and reasonable Cost. Many software developers trying to get the benefits of cloud computing and want to access the cloud environments at low cost and easy access. For this rationale and real-time cloud services, a reliable virtual platform is required. Many issues are encountering in development and deployment of these platforms regarding programming models, application architecture, APIs and services it provided. On the other hand, there are too many issues on the client side, including the limitation of tools, the interaction between client and service provider and user requirements in a specific cloud. As the cloud is inherently distributed environment, so it fabricates gaps in communication and coordination between stack holders. To cope with these obstacles and overcome challenges during software development in Cloud Computing, it is necessary to have a framework which resolves the issues and develop the software process model which meet the user requirement and provide quality of services within a time and budget. In this paper, the literature review mainly focuses on the software process model with their strength and weakness. The literature review also analyzes some attributes for software life cycle including cost, time, scalability and QoS.

The workshop OCLApps 2006 was organized as a part of MoDELS/UML Conference in Genova, Italy. It continues the series of five OCL (Object Constraint Language) workshops held at previous UML/MoDELS conferences between 2000 - 2005. Similar to its predecessors, the workshop addressed both people from academia and industry. The advent of the MDA (Model Driven Architecture) vision and the rapid acceptance of MDE (Model Driven Engineering) approaches emphasize new application domains (like Semantic Web or Domain Specific Languages) and call for new OCL functionalities. In this context, the OCLApps 2006 Workshop, was conceived as a forum enabling researchers and industry experts to present and debate how the OCL could support these new requirements.

The software project start developing from different methodologies. For the development of the projects different models are being selected according to the project’s goal and aim. Methodologies decide the time period of any software project without any suitable model software cannot survive in this competitive environment in software market. Every organization have their own effective and efficient software development model. The important stages of any software development life cycle are: Requirement Elicitation, Designing, Coding, Testing, Install/Deploy and Maintenance. Software process model explain the workflow of the project. The making process of software best decide the execution of product. The research paper explains different methodologies life-cycle waterfall, agile, iterative model, spiral model, V-model with their advantages and disadvantages. [8] This paper also explains the best fit SDLC for different software applications.

There are many software model are being used in industry like waterfall, rad, and scrum etc. Among all agile model is considered as fastest software development model. In agile, the software development is based on iterative cycle and the main objective is to deliver the software faster with on-going user participation. Traditional software development considered comprehensive feasibility documentation for the success of project where as requirement gathering and comprehensive feasibility report of project are not emphasized in the case of agile software development. Agile model provides rapid solution of software development which leads towards the absence of good design, and architecture and it is observed to be very expensive if followed. As a remedy, a proposed lifecycle for agile software development has been designed. The proposed lifecycle outlined in this paper integrates usability evaluation concepts and agile software methodologies for the development of interactive software. An experimental report will be provided in future after successful testing of proposed lifecycle in the software companies by developing an interactive desktop based application.

The implementation of any software development process involves the consumption of critical resources. Software engineers cannot experiment with different development processes before starting them in real projects, due to the time that would entail and the number of elements that are involved, so it is vital to have tools that allow the pre-visualization of the results of executing the software development process and how the environmental variables affect it, thus being able to anticipate under what conditions the software development process will be deployed. This paper presents the modelling and simulation of a software development process using System Dynamics (SD), which allows the graphical representation of the elements intervening in the software process, and the incorporation of as many relevant elements as possible. As a software costs estimation reference, the COCOMO estimation model was used; which beyond being reliable has a theoretical-practical foundation. As an ideal, and real, software process system, the Craig Larman Software Process model was chosen, also known as the Larman Method. The simulation model developed here, allows one to make some initial estimation of the software process and its elements’ behavior in the course of the simulation time. This is possible thanks to the observation and study of the system’s state variables, empowering one to discern about the effect of changes in the parameters on the general process. This model becomes a tool for supporting Software Project Management teams and enterprises whose business care on Technological Projects Management.

During project planning, knowledge about software processes is useful in several situations: software processes are defined, activities are scheduled, and people are allocated to these activities. In this context, standard software processes are used as basis for defining project processes, and tools are used to support scheduling, people allocation, and so on. Ideally, people and tools should share a common conceptualization regarding this domain for allowing interoperability, and correct use of the tools. A domain ontology can be used to define an explicit representation of this shared conceptualization. Moreover, for a domain ontology to adequately serve as a reference model, it should be built explicitly taking foundational concepts into account. This paper discusses the reengineering of part of a Software Process Ontology based on the Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO). The part reengineered concerns standard processes, project processes, and activities, which are analyzed at the light of UFO concepts.

Abstract. Foundational Ontologies are theoretically well-founded domain- independent systems of categories that have been successfully used to improve the quality of conceptual modeling languages and models. In this paper, we pre- sent the latest developments in the UFO ontology. Moreover, we elaborate on the relevance of these foundational ontologies in the development of domain ontologies by showing a case study in the software process domain.

Software engineering strives to introduce methodologies aim to deliver quality software systems. However, it is agreed that there is no unique methodology can be suitable for all projects situation without a level of customization. Method Engineering (ME) presents an engineering approach to restructure rigid methodologies/methods into reusable components of methods. Situational method engineering (SME) is particular paradigm of ME aims to enable the composition of new methods by selecting appropriate method components from some method repository according to requirement of the specific project at hand. Many SME approaches have realized this aim with their own perspectives. However, the use of these approaches is still limited to their inventors, and the approaches themselves are not automated or supported with tools. Moreover, the interoperability between different approaches is an issue. Service-oriented architecture (SOA) provides a promising solution for such problems. Service-oriented software engineering (SOSE) concerns of designing and developing software systems within a set of design principles that govern SOA. Based on the assumption that software methods is a software too, this paper proposes to design a SME service-oriented methodology, in which it allows the development of software development methods in the form of services and within the SOA.

Organizations that develop software have recognized that software process models are particularly useful for maintaining a high standard of quality. In the last decade, simulations of software processes were used in several settings and environments. This paper gives a short overview of the benefits of software process simulation and describes the development of a discrete-event model, a technique rarely used before in that field. The model introduced in this paper captures the behavior of a detailed code inspection process. It aims at reducing the risks inherent in implementing inspection processes and techniques in the overall development process. The determination of the underlying cause-effect relations using data mining techniques and empirical data is explained. Finally, the paper gives an outlook on our future work.