Utilizing Past Event Histories in a Process-Centered Software Engineering Environment

  • Authors:
  • John C. Grundy;Warwick B. Mugridge;John G. Hosking

  • Affiliations:
  • -;-;-

  • Venue:
  • ASWEC '97 Proceedings of the Australian Software Engineering Conference
  • Year:
  • 1997

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.01

Visualization

Abstract

When working on complex software systems, it is often difficult for multiple software developers to coordinate their work, and for developers to coordinate their multiple tool and software process usage. Process-centered Software Engineering Environments attempt to help developers manage the complexities of such coordination by codifying steps in a software process, and codifying the "work context" a developer utilizes (i.e. the artifacts, tools and collaborators the developer requires during their work). Unfortunately most process-centered environments do not adequately support work coordination, ease-of-use and improvement of process models. We describe our work utilizing histories of past events within a process-centered environment to give developers extra leverage when using process models to guide collaborative software development. We describe techniques for work history determination, improved visualization support for work coordination, and automatic process enactment and process improvement. Our approach to realizing these facilities within a process-centered software engineering environment is described, and our experiences using our event history-based techniques during software development is reviewed.