Impact of software process on quality
(IMPROQ 2003)

Call for Participation

Early in the history of software development right after the introduction of the first programming languages the need was raised for software design methods. Hereby, it was assumed that software development cannot be just done in an ad hoc way but needs to be subject to rules to provide software with quality such as correctness, robustness, adaptability, reusability and maintainability. Over the last decades numerous software development methods have been introduced to guide the software engineer in achieving these quality goals. Most popular methods have a general character, but some methods, like real-time system design, are targeted at specific application domains. Some methods are specifically defined for a given phase in the life cycle of software development, such as requirement analysis or domain analysis.  Methods usually include a number of different heuristic rules, which are needed to produce or refine different artifacts. The structuring of rules in different ways has led to different software development processes. It is generally assumed that method-based software development is useful for developing high-quality software. 

In contrast to the conventional methods and process improvement criteria such as for example as defined by the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) and Software Process Improvement and Capability Determination model (SPICE), recently extreme programming (XP), or more general, agile methods have been advocated as a new paradigm for high-speed and volatile software development.  The basic critique of the agile software development community is that conventional software development processes are too rigid and heavyweight to achieve the aimed quality factors for contemporary projects. As such applying these heavyweight methods may impede the achievement of the aimed quality factors, i.e. the method itself can become a problem. Instead of focusing on process, in the view of XP, it is therefore suggested to adopt a leightweight process with less rigid processes. Agile methods do not focus on rigid rules that are applied in a strict order but rather it introduces a set of practices with which it is aimed to develop software in a more effective and efficient way.

No matter which process is applied the bottom line is that quality is a key concern in the software development process. In this workshop we aim to identify the impact of software processes on the software quality factors. What are the good and what are the bad  issues in a process? More concretely, we aim to find answers to/clarify  the following questions::

Topics

Based on the questions the following represents the possible topics that the workshop can cover:

Further please look at the registration section (on the left) for the participation rules.

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