Masud Fazal-Baqaie

Software Processes Management by Method Engineering with MESP

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.

HELENA Study: Reasons for Combining Agile and Traditional Software Development Approaches in German Companies

Many software development teams face the problem of selecting a suitable development approach fitting to their specific context. According to them, the combination of agile and traditional approaches seems to be the solution to handle this problem. However, the current state of practice with respect to hybrid approaches is not sufficiently examined. Most studies focus either on traditional or on agile methods, but the combination of both is not well investigated yet. The “Hybrid dEveLopmENt Approaches in software systems development” (HELENA) study performs a large-scale international survey in order to gain insights into the distribution of hybrid approaches. So far, the study indicates several reasons why companies combine agile and traditional approaches. The hybrid approaches aim at improving the frequency of delivery to customers, the adaptability and the flexibility of the process to react to change. Furthermore, it is the aim to increase the productivity. In this publication, we present the current state of the German results and outline the next steps.

Breathing Life into Situational Software Engineering Methods

Software engineering methods are used to prescribe and coordinate the tasks necessary to plan, build, deliver, and maintain software. There is a broad consensus that there is no one-size-fits-all method and that, e.g., agile and plan-driven approaches have to be mixed sometimes, based on the context of a project. Creating these so-called situational methods and assuring that they cover all necessary details consistently is a challenge. There is also the challenge for the project teams to follow methods as prescribed by the method engineer. Our approach supports the creation of consistent situational methods from a repository of pre-existing building blocks. Moreover, we present means to enact these methods with standard BPEL/BPEL4People workflow engines, automating the coordination of tasks and providing guidance for them.

Concept-Based Engineering of Situation-Specific Migration Methods

Software migration methods enable to reuse legacy systems by transferring them into new environments. Thereby, the method used needs to fit to the projects situation by considering conceptual differences between the source and target environment and automating parts of the migration whenever suitable. Using an inappropriate migration method may lead to a decreased software quality or increased effort. Various method engineering approaches have been proposed to support the development of situation-specific migration methods. However, most do not provide a sufficient degree of flexibility when developing a method or fall short in guiding the endeavor. To address this problem, we introduce a situational method engineering framework to guide the development of model-driven migration methods by assembling predefined buildings blocks. The development is centered around the identification of concepts within a legacy system and the selection of suitable migration strategies. We evaluate the framework by an industrial project in which we migrated a legacy system from the domain of real estates to a new environment.

Automated quality analysis of software engineering method models

Using a suitable software engineering method (SEM) for a specific project and following it properly is important for the resulting software quality. However, SEMs described in natural language are often ambiguous and lack automated guidance for the team members, causing impediments for the project. The model-based approach Method Engineering with Method Services and Method Patterns (MESP) allows to model enactable SEM models by composing pre-defined building blocks. Up to now, the quality of MESP models had to be checked manually which was tedious and error-prone at times. In this paper, we present an automated design-time quality analysis for MESP SEM models. In particular, our analysis allows to automatically evaluate generic quality characteristics relevant for all SEM models as well as specific quality requirements specified using MESP method patterns. We integrated the quality analysis framework into the MESP Workbench and our evaluation shows that the analysis is fast enough to provide timely feedback even for large SEM models.

Tickets Without Fine

Global software development projects are characterized by the collaboration of team members that are distributed among different locations and belong to different organizations. They bear their own specific challenges, especially if combined with an agile approach, so that established development processes might become inappropriate. Based on the experience with a real life industrial project involving organizations from India and Germany, we explain how the systematic design and implementation of an artifact-based and ticket-driven process can foster process conformance, transparency, and communication, and thus help to overcome these challenges.