Home // International Journal On Advances in Software, volume 8, numbers 1 and 2, 2015 // View article
Authors:
Roy Oberhauser
Keywords: process-centered software engineering environments; software engineering environments; software engineering process modeling; software engineering process model transformation; SPEM; UMA; Unified Method Architecture; model-driven software development.
Abstract:
Software engineering (SE)-specific process models and their notation, such as the Software & Systems Process Engineering Metamodel, are typically not specified or available in an executable form that can provide automated guidance in human-centric software engineering workflows. These SE process models generally remain abstract in order to be broadly applicable, and when any are concretized, they often exist only in the form of documentation. Thus, they are not actually relevant operationally, affecting process utilization and governance. On the other hand, common business process modeling notation such as BPMN is generalized and not conducive for providing the context-aware support needed for executable SE workflows. Thus, a practical method is needed that supports comprehensive SE process documentation, yet also provides an SE workflow modeling capability that can transform documented SE workflows into an enactable form executable in today's workflow management systems. The method presented in this paper can utilize an available comprehensive SE process documentation meta-model and automatically extract incorporated SE concepts and workflow concepts to a workflow model, specifically the Software Engineering Workflow Language (SEWL). From this the following are supported: 1) graphical-based workflow modeling, 2) model-based transformation of workflow concepts to diverse workflow management systems (WfMS), and 3) the semantic transformation of SE concepts to contextually-aware process-centered software engineering environments. The results show the viability and practicality of such a method to document, extract, graphically model, transform, and enact SE workflows in support of contextual guidance capabilities for software engineers.
Pages: 167 to 181
Copyright: Copyright (c) to authors, 2015. Used with permission.
Publication date: June 30, 2015
Published in: journal
ISSN: 1942-2628