Probing limits to automation: towards deeper process models

Recent progress in specifying and prescribing software development processes has demonstrated that automated support is an achievable goal. Automated support can, for example, prevent a programmer from starting compilations before an appropriate environment is set up, enforce a policy of regression and performance testing before a customer release, and insure that new source versions are checked back into the source code control system. Such support will be valuable to programmers, whose intellectual energies can be freed from many process details in order to be directed towards other pressing concerns; and, it will be. valuable to managers, who can be assured that certain project policies and conventions are routinely observed.