On building software process models under the lamppost

  • Authors:

  • W. Curtis;H. Krasner;V. Shen;N. Iscoe

  • Affiliations:

  • MCC Software Technology Program, Austin, Texas;MCC Software Technology Program, Austin, Texas;MCC Software Technology Program, Austin, Texas;MCC Software Technology Program, Austin, Texas

  • Venue:
  • ICSE '87 Proceedings of the 9th international conference on Software Engineering
  • Year:
  • 1987

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Abstract

Most software process models are based on the management tracking and control of a project. The popular alternatives to these models such as rapid prototyping and program transformation are built around specific technologies, many of which are still in their adolescence. Neither of these approaches describe the actual processes that occur during the development of a software system. That is, these models focus on the series of artifacts that exist at the end of phases of the process, rather than on the actual processes that are conducted to create the artifacts. We conducted a field study of large system development projects to gather empirical information about the communication and technical decision-making processes that underlie the design of such systems. The findings of this study are reviewed for their implications on modeling the process of designing large software systems. The thesis of the paper is that while there are many foci for process models, the most valuable are those which capture the processes that control the most variance in software productivity and quality.