REQUIREMENTS AND VALIDATION OF THE E3 PROCESS MODELING SYSTEM
Letizia Jaccheri · Series on software engineering and knowledge engineering · 2006
In the framework of the general goals of this book which are those of giving the state of the art of software process topics and providing practitioners with a practical view of the developed methods, I use my own experience as process modeling researcher through the last fifteen years to give an own contribution to the goals. I will address the following questions: How have process modeling researchers elicited requirements for software process modeling systems? First, to what degree have users been involved in the definition of these requirements? Second, how has IT evolution contributed to these requirements definition? Lastly, how has general software engineering knowledge influenced this definition? E3 (Environment for Experimenting and Evolving Software Process Models) is a process modeling system conceived to provide help for process/project managers, who construct and maintain models and to practitioners, who use software process models. The initial requirements of the E3 system have been derived from a literature study, lessons learned by working with other PM systems, and use of general purpose technology for process modeling purposes. E3 has been designed and implemented twice. The first version of the E3 system was validated by a case study and the results of this validation resulted in the requirements for the second version of the system. The second version of the E3 system has been validated by empirical investigations in industrial and academic settings. The answers to the research questions given in this chapter have not to be regarded as an attempt to provide a general state of the art of software process topics or a complete view of the field for practitioners. Rather, they have to be considered as a set of lessons learnt about the development and validation of one of the process modeling systems, which have been developed in the last years.