Acquisition of a Project-Specific Process
This work addresses the challenge of adapting generic processes to project-specific needs in software development, particularly in the automotive industry, but appears incremental as it builds on existing process tailoring concepts.
The paper tackles the problem of generic development processes being unsuitable for specific projects by proposing the Emergent Process Acquisition (EPAc) method, which combines top-down tailoring using a process line with bottom-up refinement based on activity tracking to improve tailoring efficiency and process adherence, with an initial validation study conducted in the automotive domain.
Currently, proposed development processes are often considered too generic for operational use. This often leads to a misunderstanding of the project-specific processes and its refuse. One reason for non-appropriate project-specific processes is insufficient support for the tailoring of generic processes to project characteristics and context constraints. To tackle this problem, we propose a method for the acquisition of a project-specific process. This method uses a domain-specific process line for top-down process tailoring and supports bottom-up refinement of the defined generic process based on tracking process activities. The expected advantage of the method is tailoring efficiency gained by usage of a process line and higher process adherence gained by bottom-up adaptation of the process. The work described was conducted in the automotive domain. This article presents an overview of the so-called Emergent Process Acquisition method (EPAc) and sketches an initial validation study.