Software Process Validation: Quantitatively Measuring the Correspondence of a Process to a Model

Abstract

To a great extent, the usefulness of a formal model of a software process lies in its ability to accurately predict the behavior of the executing process. Similarly, the usefulness of an executing process lies largely in its ability to fulfill the requirements embodied in a formal model of the process. When process models and process executions diverge, something significant is happening. The authors have developed techniques for uncovering and measuring the discrepancies between models and executions, which they call process validation. Process validation takes a process execution and a process model, and measures the level of correspondence between the two. Their metrics are tailorable and give process engineers control over determining the severity of different types of discrepancies. The techniques provide detailed information once a high-level measurement indicates the presence of a problem. They have applied their process validation methods in an industrial case study, of which a portion is described in this paper.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
May 01, 1997
Accession Number
ADA448278

Entities

People

  • Alexander L. Wolf
  • Jonathan E. Cook

Organizations

  • University of Colorado Boulder

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Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Abstracts
  • Algorithms
  • Case Studies
  • Computer Programming
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  • Data Analysis
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  • Engineers
  • Estimators
  • Language
  • Measurement
  • Software Development
  • Standards
  • Validation

Fields of Study

  • Computer science
  • Engineering

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