Turning development standards into repositories of experiences
Scott Henninger · Software Process Improvement and Practice · 2001
Abstract There has been a resurgence of interest in developing organization‐wide standard development methodologies (SDMs) for software development. It is well known that creating an SDM is only the first step in the process of improving software engineering practices in an organization. SDMs must become living documents that evolve with changing software development needs. The research presented in this paper presents a tool and associated methodology that helps organizations tailor SDMs to the individual needs of projects and capture project experiences that are used to refine and modify the standard. In addition to creating a flexible software process with necessary degrees of formal procedures to ensure high‐quality products, a secondary goal of this research is to turn SDMs into a resource for software managers and developers, something that truly supports the development process as it is actually practised. This approach features a methodology based on organizational learning principles, a rule‐based system to tailor the SDM to meet the characteristics of individual projects, and a case‐based architecture to capture and provide relevant development knowledge throughout the development lifecycle. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.