Comparison of software repositories for their usability in software process reconstruction

Software development process is like any other business process composed of activities carried out by process participants in order to achieve a certain goal. In contrast to a typical business process that is relatively deterministic and thus repeatable, software processes are much more dynamic in nature and dependent on a number of circumstances. This explains why actual software development practice in organizations defer from what these organizations prescribe within their adopted software development methods. The research that is reported in this paper aims at analyzing the suitability of software repositories to support de facto software process reconstruction. We examine most common utility tools that are used in software development and analyze the information they capture (we do that for a number of open source and commercial projects). We than suggest what would be a reasonable level of documentation for a software process so that this information would adequately facilitate project managers and developers at their work. Finally, based on our findings, we provide guidelines on how organizations should use software repositories to support the process reconstruction.