Modeling Software Development Practices using Reusable Project Patterns: A Case Study
D. Martín, J. García, J. Urbano and A. Amescua
European Systems & Software Process Improvement and Innovation Conference, Industrial Track, 2011.
Abstract
Software patterns are a proven solution for information management that allows us to formal-ize the necessary knowledge to solve recurring problems. In process engineering they are useful too, as they can help formalizing knowledge about development methodologies, refer-ence frameworks, best practices and process within an organization. One of the main prob-lems for an effective application of process patterns in the software industry is the difficulty of formalizing the knowledge about the development process, specially the one coming from ex-perience or particular of the company. In this paper we discuss the main success factors and problems for software process engi-neers to be able to model the best practices of software engineering by modeling process pat-terns. Also, we propose and use a model called RPP (Reusable Process Pattern), containing the main information elements we can find in any development process. The authors carried out a case study in the University Carlos III of Madrid, where senior Com-puter Science students used RPP. With this study we show that the quality of the pattern for-malization is correlated with the quality of the bibliographical sources to extract information from, the experience on specific software engineering methods and the experience in formaliz-ing knowledge. We also analyze the usefulness of RPP and the modeling easiness of each of the elements that compose RPP.