Formalizing the Software Engineering Process Using a Graphical Software Process Modelling Formalism

Abstract

Abstract-Software process modelling has recently become an area of interest within both academia and industry. It aims at defining and formalizing the software process in the form of formal rigorous models. A software process modelling formalism presents the language or notation in which the software process is defined and formalized. Several software process modelling formalisms have been introduced lately, however, they have failed to gain the attention of the industry. One major objective of formalizing the software process that has ever been an issue of research, is to enhance the understanding and communication among software process users. To achieve this aim, a modelling formalism has to offer a common language to be wellunderstood by all software process users. BPMN presents a graphical-based widely accepted standard formalism, mainly aimed at business process modelling. This paper illustrates a software process modelling formalism based upon BPMN specifications for representing the software process, named as, SP2MN. The paper also demonstrates the applicability and evaluation of the proposed formalism by; utilizing the standard ISPW-6 benchmark problem, in addition to comparing the expressiveness of SP2MN with similar software process modelling formalisms. The evaluations prove that SP2MN contributes in enhancing software process formalization. SP2MN, accordingly, can be used as a standard software process modelling formalism.

POEML: a Process Orchestration, Execution, and Modeling Language

“…Many works have used the ISPW-6 benchmark to evaluate their proposals, such as in previous studies. [46][47][48][49][50][51] The ISPW-6 benchmark "is a process model carefully designed to incorporate important process aspects and issues seen in real-world software processes. It consists of a core problem and several optional extensions.…”

“…ISPW‐6 shows that POEML covers the common and standard notions of software processes, that it allows a direct expression of these notions, and that it offers to users the possibility to model their processes with the level of detail they need. Many works have used the ISPW‐6 benchmark to evaluate their proposals, such as in previous studies 46–51 …”