Prism=methodology+process-oriented environment

A description is given of Prism, an experimental process-oriented environment supporting methodical development, instantiation, and execution of software process models. Also described is an architecture that captures this model in its various components. The architecture has been designed to hold a product software process description, the life cycle of which is supported by an explicit representation of a higher level (or meta) process description. Also described is the nine-step Prism methodology for building and tailoring process models, and several scenarios to support this description are given. In Prism, process models are built using a hybrid process modeling language, which is based on a high-level Petri net formalism and rules. The Prism prototype has been implemented on UNIX, GRAS database for attributed graph structures, and the Sunview user interface