The SALAM model: an exploratory study for the development of a holistic software traceability model under a tetrad of contextual constraints
Usman Khan Durrani · RMIT Research Repository (RMIT University Library) · 2015
Software configuration management is a software engineering process that facilitates the governance of software development activities and provides traceability of changes. Traceability and governance are important quality attributes for all types of software development environments. At present no comprehensive traceability model exists that can facilitate organisations by tracing both product and process knowledge during their software development operations. This study examines the software configuration management process in large, medium and small organisations, where agile and traditional software development methods coexist under the guidelines for software process improvement standards with different types of computing environments. For this research, I examine the impact of the Tetrad of Contextual (ToC) constraints drawn from the traceability framework for the implementation of a software configuration management process. The ToC constraints (which includes the impact of software development methodologies, computing environments, software process improvement standards, and organisation size). The aim of this research is to extend the existing traceability meta-model developed by Ramesh et al. (2001) to include a management systems’ view. This extended traceability meta-model provides a comprehensive traceability view covering both product and process knowledge perspectives. In addition, I also propose and test a reference traceability model called SALAM (Software configuration Agile Lean Adaptable Management; in Arabic it also means ‘peace‘) which can facilitate the practitioner in implementing a software configuration management process under this ToC constraints. Due to the exploratory nature of the research in investigating the software configuration management process under the ToC constraints, an exploratory iterative sequential mixed design approach is chosen and divided into three research phases. I identify a case study, extend the traceability meta-model to add the management system view, develop a reference traceability model, and then perform quantitative validation of the reference traceability model. Both the extended holistic traceability meta-model and the associated reference traceability model SALAM are validated. It is identified that all sizes of organisations consider management systems very important for establishing traceability. Although their traceability solutions varied in terms of the granularity of the software configuration management process and the sophistication of the tools used, they all show evidence for taking a value-based approach using lean thinking principles and practices.