Towards patterns for MDE-related processes to detect and handle changeability risks

Abstract

One of the multiple technical factors which affect changeability of software is model-driven engineering (MDE), where often several models and a multitude of manual as well as automated development activities have to be mastered to derive the final software product. The ability to change software with only reasonable costs, however, is of uppermost importance for the iterative and incremental development of software as well as agile development in general. Thus, the effective applicability of agile processes is influenced by the used MDE activities. However, there is currently no approach available to systematically detect and handle such risks to the changeability that result from the embedded MDE activities. In this paper we extend our beforehand-introduced process modeling approach by a notion of process pattern to capture typical situations that can be associated with risk or benefit with respect changeability. In addition, four candidates for the envisioned process patterns are presented in detail in the paper. Further, we developed strategies to handle changeability risks associated to these process patterns.