A unified framework for software engineering process improvement — A taxonomy comparative analysis

Abstract

Concurrent adoption of software engineering process improvement frameworks have been widely practiced by the software organizations. The software development organizations leverage these frameworks to better address process improvement challenges. This paper develops an integrated framework for software engineering process improvement practices and unifies the theories in process definition and establishment. The unified framework provides a set of formal descriptions for software engineering process improvement frameworks. Requirements and architectures for software engineering process improvement frameworks are investigated. The main challenge in the integration is the interoperability of the frameworks. Inaccurate integration approach results in inefficiency of the integration process. Common interoperability issues in the integration of current process models and methodologies are addressed. In addition to this, omissions, differences and gaps can be identified and further examined for development of new unified framework. Taxonomy for software engineering process framework is used to support the understanding and comparison of diverse software quality frameworks. The taxonomy should be based on discipline-specific framework. Besides, other alternative approaches for comparing the software engineering process improvement framework are presented. The research outcome is expected to identify the structural relationships among the frameworks. Derivation from the taxonomy includes characteristics and categories of attributes tailored to the discipline-specific framework.