Eureka Software Factory: OPIUM An environment for Software Process Modeling integrated with a Project Management Tool

Abstract

1. Abstract The global evolution of software development activity leads to large projects involving many people. Organizing the work of these people is a big challenge for Software Engineering. The ESF (EurEka Software Factory) program, funded by some European countries, relies on the idea of a software factory for improving software development productivity and quality. With the concept of Software Factory comes the concept of Software Process Control (or guidance). SPECIMEN, one of the ESF sub-projects, aims at developing a language and an environment for modeling and guiding the processes of software production. We present in this paper OPIUM[OPlU89], one of the major results of SPECIMEN. OPIUM is an environment for Process Modeling able to build programs for controlling the process of software development (the so called Process Engines in the ESF terminology). Process Engines are not stand alone tools but are fully integrated with Project Management Tools and also with Production Tools. This paper focuses on the basic mechanisms used to build and run process models with OPIUM, and in particular on the close relation between Process Engines and project management system.