Fellipe Araújo Aleixo

Automating the Variability Management, Customization and Deployment of Software Processes: A Model-Driven Approach

This paper presents a model-driven and integrated approach to variability management, customization and execution of software processes. Our approach is founded on the principles and techniques of software product lines and model-driven engineering. Model-driven engineering provides support to the specification of software processes and their transformation to workflow specifications. Software product lines techniques allows the automatic variability management of process elements and fragments. Additionally, in our approach, workflow technologies enable the process execution in workflow engines. In order to evaluate the approach feasibility, we have implemented it using existing model-driven technologies. The software processes are specified using Eclipse Process Framework (EPF). The automatic variability management of software processes has been implemented as an extension of an existing product derivation tool. Finally, ATL and Acceleo transformation languages are adopted to transform EPF process to jPDL workflow language specifications in order to enable the deployment and execution of software processes in the JBoss BPM workflow engine.

SMartySPEM: A SPEM-Based Approach for Variability Management in Software Process Lines

The definition of customized software processes can lead to improve the quality of software products and increasing the productivity. The Software Process Line (SPrL) approach might be taken into consideration to improve the establishment of customized processes for a given domain. The specific processes are derived in a systematic way, based on the resolution of variabilities explicitly represented in process notations, such as SPEM. SPEM has an UML 2 profile used to model software process elements. Therefore, this paper presents the SMartySPEM approach, which extends the SPEM profile for representing variabilities in SPrLs taking into consideration the SMarty approach for variability management. SMartySPEM is composed of an UML profile (SMartySPEMProfile) for representing variabilities and guidelines that suggest how to identify variabilities in a SPrL. A SMartySPEM application example is presented in an excerpt of a SPrL designed based on the Unified Process.

A Comparative Study of Compositional and Annotative Modelling Approaches for Software Process Lines

This paper presents a comparative study of compositional and annotative modeling approaches for software process lines. In our comparative study, Open UP and Scrum based software process lines extracted from existing projects are modeled and implemented using an existing compositional approach -- EPF Composer, and an annotative approach -- GenArch-P, with the main aim to address a systematic variability management and automatic process derivation. In order to promote the analysis of the approaches were adapted some comparison criteria previously adopted in other studies. Our study results show that the annotative approach can bring many advantages to the modeling of software process lines considering our comparison criteria. On the other hand, our study also concludes that many existing compositional mechanisms should also be integrated with annotative approaches in order to improve the modularity of process elements associated to specific kinds of process variabilities.

An Approach to Manage and Customize Variability in Software Processes

This paper presents an approach to the management and customization of variabilities in software processes. It supports the automatic handling of variations occurring in process specifications, and promotes the automatic derivation of specific customizations of these processes. In order to validate and demonstrate the approach benefits and feasibility, the paper presents an implementation that allows the customization of processes specified in the Eclipse Process Framework (EPF).

Modeling Variabilities from Software Process Lines with Compositional and Annotative Techniques: A Quantitative Study

A software process line (SPrL) represents a set of software process that share a common base of roles, practices, activities, and artifacts. Various individual approaches have been proposed to modeling software process lines. The majority of these approaches can be characterized as compositional or annotative approaches. This work presents a quantitative comparative study of the EPF Composer compositional approach, and the GenArch-P annotative approach. Our study has considered internal attributes of the specification of SPrLs, such as modularity, size and complexity. Our study has found that the GenArch-P approach presented better results in terms of size and complexity attributes, while the EPF Composer improve the modularity of SPrL specifications. We also envisioned a possible integration of the two approaches.

Driving Academic Spin-off by Software Development Process: A Case Study in Federal Institute of Rio Grande do Norte - Brazil

This paper presents, as a case study, the experience of Federal Institute of Rio Grande do Norte (IFRN) in using software process, as a means to create institutional ambience for technological innovation and new start-ups formation. As a professional qualification institution, IFRN has succeeded during its century-old existence in providing good job opportunities for its students. However, the same educational model has proved not to be as adequate to give the students the same opportunity to run their own businesses. Having this in mind, significant institutional arrangements and curriculum innovations were made, mainly related to software development disciplines, in order to support the gradual transition of academic requirements (e.g. knowledge acquisition and best practices) into business and more market-oriented ones. This paper reports this trajectory, the main lessons learned, and the new challenges ahead.

A Software Process Line for Combinational Creativity-based Requirements Elicitation.

The need for innovation and appreciation of creative solutions has driven requirements engineering researchers to investigate creativity techniques to elicit useful and unique requirements. Some techniques are based on the combination of ideas (requirements, words or problems) that generally come from different sources and are carried out in a process that involves different roles. However, how can we identify the common core and which variations can be adapted to the organizational context where the technique will be used? This article presents a Software Process Line (SPrL) to elicit requirements based on combinational creativity. This SPrL represents commonalities and variabilities found in some combinational creativity techniques thereby it helps teams to define the combinational technique according their organizational context. We validate this approach by discussing how the SPrL is aligned with three techniques that have already been used in experimental studies and produced satisfactory results.