Uma abordagem anotativa para gerência de variabilidade em linhas de processos de software: concepção, implementação e avaliação

摘要

Nowadays, the importance of using software processes is already consolidatedand is considered fundamental to the success of software development projects. Largeand medium software projects demand the definition and continuous improvement ofsoftware processes in order to promote the productive development of high-qualitysoftware. Customizing and evolving existing software processes to address the varietyof scenarios, technologies, culture and scale is a recurrent challenge required by thesoftware industry. It involves the adaptation of software process models for the realityof their projects. Besides, it must also promote the reuse of past experiences in thedefinition and development of software processes for the new projects. The adequatemanagement and execution of software processes can bring a better quality andproductivity to the produced software systems. This work aimed to explore the use andadaptation of consolidated software product lines techniques to promote themanagement of the variabilities of software process families. In order to achieve thisaim: (i) a systematic literature review is conducted to identify and characterizevariability management approaches for software processes; (ii) an annotative approachfor the variability management of software process lines is proposed and developed; andfinally (iii) empirical studies and a controlled experiment assess and compare theproposed annotative approach against a compositional one. One study a comparativequalitative study analyzed the annotative and compositional approaches from differentperspectives, such as: modularity, traceability, error detection, granularity, uniformity,adoption, and systematic variability management. Another study a comparativequantitative study has considered internal attributes of the specification of softwareprocess lines, such as modularity, size and complexity. Finally, the last study acontrolled experiment evaluated the effort to use and the understandability of theinvestigated approaches when modeling and evolving specifications of software processlines. The studies bring evidences of several benefits of the annotative approach, and thepotential of integration with the compositional approach, to assist the variabilitymanagement of software process lines