Issues in software process automation-from a practical perspective

This paper describes a process-oriented approach currently employed by a DOD software maintenance organization to use an integrated software engineering environment, largely based on commercially-available tools, for enhancing quality and productivity during software maintenance. Before automated support could be provided to the organization, a complete review of existing procedures was required. The first step was an extensive modeling effort to identify the procedures and document them in detail. It was then possible to identify, and in some cases modify, those procedures that could benefit from automated support. The result of this organization-wide process analysis was then mapped into an existing commercial process enactment tool and used to automate, control, measure, and improve the software maintenance process