A hierarchical and functional approach to software process description

Research into describing software processes (such as design, development, maintenance and reuse) is attracting much attention in the software engineering community. There are a variety of views, ranging from pessimistic to optimistic, about whether it is possible to describe real and practical software processes in such a way as to guide human users in performing software activity: the process of software design, for example, is one of the most creative of human activities, and it may not be possible to achieve a complete formalisation of it at the present time. We are, however, justified in working on software process description for several reasons: every scientific study begins with description; software methods, on which a great deal of work has been done, need to be described in some language so that they can be better used and communicated; and the software industry needs some means of process description to achieve better quality control over products.