Hybrid approach of knowledge and case-based reasoning to support software process engineering

Abstract

Since managing the software process is difficult due to the increasing complexity and size of software products, the software process cycle needs to be supported by software process engineering works. In process cycle, one of the practical problems is in customization and improvement of software process. The customization of software process is time-consuming and error-prone because of high complexity of activities for developing large software products and heavy reliance on human experts```` past experience and expertise. The traditional approaches of reuse library and knowledge-based systems have limitations in adapting the retrieved case to a project at hand and in suggesting the customized process of various application domains across the whole organizations. In this dissertation, mechanisms to support software process engineering, especially for customization and improvement of software process, are proposed. The approach uses an organizational PAL (Process Asset Library) to help accumulation of knowledge for various application domains and easy reuse of objects for software processes. The proposed approach has several advantages. First, it is efficient in proposing customized software process by utilizing the past experiences and fine tuning by CBR and knowledge-based approach, respectively. CBR is used to retrieve the most similar case and knowledge base is used to reconcile the discrepancy between the retrieved case and a new project at hand. As a constructive method, the customized software process can be developed from a collection of activities by knowledge-based reasoning. Second, the approach can be used across the various application domains. For this, knowledge for several application domain factors, which can determine the required features and activities in the upper layers of process abstraction, is included. Third, with the PAL, reuse of all experiences related to software processes and support of most process cycle is possible. The PAL has t...