Sunday, October 18, 2009

What is the relation between software process and business process

This is draft version so that this version has high possibility to be revised!
First of all, we must agree with the definition of each term. Software process [1] is a set of activities, methods, practices and transformations that people use to develop and maintain software and the associated product( e.g, project plans, design documents, code, test cases and user manuals).
A business process[2] or business method is a collection of related, structured activities or tasks that produce a specific service or product (serve a particular goal) for a particular customer or customers.
Organization that uses software whether it is either bespoke or off-the-shelf always needs to make some adjustments or tailoring between business process and software process. The adaption is needed because the two process have different characteristics and purposes. One example for this integration is in Rational Unified Process where there is Business Modeling workflow before Requirement which the first is business process activity and the latter is software process activity.

The integration between two processes forms a software project management. To make successful software project management, we must understand and resolve some questions about the relation between these processes :
The main question is : Are all of the integration between two processes resolved automatically when we tailor software process?
If the answer is 'no' that means we must find different point of view from the business process perspective as the impact of this integration so that we must find answers from these questions :
1. How do we tailor software process based on business process context?
2. What business process factors that must be considered and addressed before software process tailoring? Is it the same if we want to tailor agile software development?
3. Is there any business process tailoring into software process?
4. How can we know that successful software project come from the integration of business and software process?
5. What is the workflow of business and software process integration?

Reference : part of my research progress report and not published yet for confidential issues
[1] Process Tailoring and the Software Capability Maturity Model, Technical Report CMU/SEI
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_process
[3] A Systematic Review of Software Process Tailoring

1 comment:

venba said...

Great thoughts you got there, believe I may possibly try just some of it throughout my daily life.




Agile Software Development