Software processes management by method engineering with MESP

Abstract

Software process management (SPM) is seen as a key factor for the resulting quality of software. Based on our experience in industrial process improvement projects, we see two major challenges to apply SPM effectively. Thereby, in our work, we focus on the method aspect of software development processes. First, methods have to be tailored consistently to projects by composing agile as well as plan-driven method building blocks. Second, methods have to be enactable to ensure that they are put into practice as intended. In this chapter, we present our assembly-based method engineering approach called Method Engineering with Method Services and Method Patterns (MESP) and explain how it tackles common SPM challenges. MESP follows the service-oriented paradigm to create formally defined composition-based methods. The methods are created specifically for individual projects based on their characteristics. They are composed based on an extensible repository of formally defined method building blocks extracted from agile and plan-driven methods. With our novel notion of method patterns, we allow to restrict the solution space of method compositions to the desired ones. In addition, we provide tooling to define building blocks and to compose them to methods consistently and we support the correct enactment of methods with a workflow engine.