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ASSET OVERVIEW

UNIT NAME

PROCDEF

VERSION
2.0.2, SPC-92041-CMC, 01-DEC-93
ORIGIN
ASSET
REVIEW CODE
OK
INET ADDRESS
librarian@source.asset.com
AUTHOR
Software Productivity Consortium
RIGHTS
Approved for public release; distribution unlimited
COPYRIGHT
1993 SPC
LOCATION
ASSET
PAL

CLASSIFICATION

KEYWORDS
Process Modeling
Modeling, Process
Process Definition
Capability Maturity Model
Model, Capability Maturity
INDEX
SW Productivity Consortium
SPC
DEPENDENCIES
None
SEE ALSO
SHORT DESCRIPTION
Guide the reader in creating a quality set of process definitions
TAXONOMY


Documents
    Process Definition and Modeling Guidebook


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ABSTRACT

Process Definition and Modeling Guidebook

The objective of this guidebook is to guide you in efficiently developing and evolving a quality set of process definitions that will direct and improve the ways you develop software-both to improve your products and process and to allow assessment at the DoD Software Engineering Institute's (SEI) Capability Maturity Model (CMM) Levels 2 (Repeatable) and 3 (Defined). You should be better able to engineer your process descriptions and the processes themselves.

This guidebook offers a practical approach to reflecting experience and distilled research, and includes highlights from a significant, real-world example. This approach has several characteristics that help ensure a successful process definition and modeling effort. For example, Managed Process Definition Methodology (MPDM):

Organizations need to have a representation option that combines the strengths of text- and graphic-based representations while minimizing their respective weaknesses. MPDM is specifically designed to support process representation as three separate yet tightly integrated concerns: (1) design, development, and implementation of the process model; (2) generation of various output products, such as guidebooks and training material, from your process model; and (3) management and review of the development of both the process model and the derived output products.

The data-organizing templates presented in this guidebook can be rendered as paper templates, but their design directly facilitates "automated templates" via mainstream information management repositories. Examples of template fields include text-oriented descriptions of activities, pre- and post-conditions, internal processing, comments, role descriptions, product descriptions, risk types and levels, revision history, etc. However, through a variety of relationships the templates also convey an explicit architecture directly supporting graphical rendering and analysis. This combined template- and graphically-based approach provides you greater opportunity for the optimal combination of both text and diagrams toward the cost-effective development and use of process representations.

There are numerous goals for process definition:

Process definitions are needed for the same reasons sports teams need playbooks. A team without a playbook must transfer everything from head to head typically through long apprenticeship, is only as good as what is in their heads, has more trouble adjusting and improving plays, scratches their changes only in the dirt, and can never be on the same page. Though they do different things with them, playbooks are important to both coaches and players-an essential organizational asset.

Every software organization, regardless of size or maturity, has a process for developing and maintaining software. When using a defined software process, your organization may experience some of the following benefits:

Existing examples of process representations include policy, procedures, and operational manuals developed by organizations to inform and guide their employees in the performance of their responsibilities. Most organizational process guidebooks only define the process, but a few make use of relatively high-level or simple process models.

Although process modeling is a comparatively rare technique for representing organizational processes, it is a well-known and mature technique for representing systems implemented by computer systems. Example techniques include State charts, Structured Analysis and Design Technique (SADTs), and the Entry-Task-Validation-eXit (ETVX) paradigm. Due to fundamental parallels between defining and modeling organizational processes and computer-based systems processes, you can apply many techniques from systems process representation to organizational process representation. Similarly, many of the advantages and benefits derived by building computer process representations can also be derived from organizational process representations.


REVISION HISTORY

2.0.2  1 June 94  Initial release to the PAL

RELEASE NOTICE

Approved for public release; Distribution unlimited

DISCLAIMER

This documentation is provided "AS IS" and without any expressed or
implied warranties whatsoever.  No warranties as to performance,
merchantability, or fitness for a particular purpose exist.
The user must assume the entire risk and liability of using this
document.  In no event shall any person or organization of people be
held responsible for any direct, indirect, consequential or
inconsequential damages or lost profits.

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