Abstract
Intecs Sistemi is an Italian software company deeply engaged in software developments for space systems. The growing role being assigned to software in the control of complex and/or critical functions of space system raised the need of a well defined and disciplined software production process to reach the required software quality.
This need is usually faced by the definition and regulation of the software process through Standards. However Standards have not solved the problem, and, to some extent, have even worsened it: thick documents, vague, ambiguous or incomplete are often hampering or slowing down production without actually assuring a better quality.
Process Modelling Technology is emerging as a set of models, techniques and tools to support effectively and efficiently a well defined and disciplined software production process through the notion of Process Centered Software Development Environments.
This paper reports a Process Improvement Experiment in a space on-board project through the adoption of Process Modelling Technology. The experiment is sponsored by the European Strategic System Initiative (ESSI). The tool Process Weaver, recently adopted by the DoD in its I-CASE initiative, was the selected process tool.
A formal BOOTSTRAP assessment was conducted at the beginning of the experiment, and repeated at the end, to reveal areas of improvement.
The paper will present and critically discuss these main topics:
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1)
industrial maturity of the Process Modelling Technology and corresponding support tools
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2)
ease of migration from traditional standards to process models
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3)
management and engineers acceptance/resistance to tools enforcing the process.
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4)
BOOTSTRAP assessments as a mechanism to monitor and measure improvement.
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© 1996 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Coppola, P., Panaroni, P. (1996). A Process Improvement Experiment through Process Modelling Technology. In: Bologna, S., Bucci, G. (eds) Achieving Quality in Software. IFIP — The International Federation for Information Processing. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-34869-8_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-34869-8_6
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