Engineering software design processes to guide process execution

Abstract

Using systematic development processes is an important characteristic of any mature engineering discipline. In current software practice, software design methodologies (SDMs) are intended to be used to help design software more systematically. This paper shows, however, that one well-known example of such an SDM, Booch Object-Oriented Design (BOOD), as described in the literature is too imprecise and incomplete to be considered as a fully systematic process for specific projects. To provide more effective and appropriate guidance and control in software design processes, we applied the process programming concept to the design process. Given two different sets of plausible design process requirements, we elaborated two more detailed and precise design processes that are responsive to these requirements. We have also implemented, experimented with, and evaluated a prototype (called Debus-Booch) that supports the execution of these detailed processes.