Barriers to Effective Process Architecture – An Experience Report

✍ Scribed by Ashok Dandekar; Dewayne E. Perry

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1996
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 706 KB
• Volume: 2
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1077-4866
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1099-1670(199603)2:1<13::aid-spip34>3.0.co;2-p

✦ Synopsis

In trying to understand the architecture of the processes governing the development of a large software product, we used various techniques for describing, analyzing and visualizing that process system. A 'big picture' visualization of the software development processes yielded a number of cogent observations: 1 / 0 mismatches, large fan ins/outs, no clear path through the project, inconsistency in the level of detail, no clear architectural organizational structure. We report the results of a quality improvement team (QIT) put together (i) to determine how the process architecture got to this state, (ii) to delineate the base measures by which we plan to measure architectural improvement, (iii) to establish surface and root causes for the current state of the architecture and define their interrelationships, and (iv) to derive primary and secondary process architecture drivers and to establish counter measures that will yield a more coherent and appropriate process architecture. As a result of these studies, we offer some principles learned about process architectures and generic processes.