Process Models: Should the Software and Systems Engineering Communities Capitalize On Their Similarities Or Go Their Separate Ways?

摘要

The ongoing process improvement efforts centered on integration of software and systems engineering, as initiated by the SEI's CMMI~(TM) project, has highlighted two key issues for researchers and practitioners: 1) A renewed focus on products and business objectives as drivers of process improvement; 2) Opportunities for high-leverage process improvements. The concept of an architecture continues to serve as a theoretical link for both the software/system tradeoffs and the integration of process improvement efforts. While respecting the legitimate differences in areas such as reliability testing, it is important to sustain the hope that overlapping or underlying theories will emerge regarding areas of common concern such as: requirements, security, safety, and performance. In order to achieve true integration of software and system engineering practices into one process improvement model, the remaining differences of terminology and model construction have to be addressed. These two communities have well-developed disparate languages and methodologies that are reflected in their different models, and entrenched in their organizational cultures. With the adoption of an integrated process improvement model, an organization can assess both software and systems engineering functions.