Dynamic evolution of software processes to evolve software systems during their development

A software system, once deployed into its target environment, might need to be modified for various reasons. The reasons might be specific to that software system, such as failures, or, more general, such as changes in the environment in which the software system is embedded. Depending on the reason, a modification might obviously not only be restricted to a particular software system. It might also concern other existing software systems and particularly also software systems under development. The modification of a software system under development is merely a problem of modifying its development process, also called software process. Such modifications generally cannot be automatically carried out by autonomous process support systems due to the complexity inherent in software processes and in the necessary modifications. It usually needs to be guided by a human process manager. A process support system can, however, offer the human process manager certain services to assist in modifying a software process. One of these services is that of decision support. This article describes a decision support system developed in the ESPRIT project Process Instance Evolution (PIE). One of the features of the decision support system is an extendable database of decision models, each of which is capable of generating specific information to assist the process manager. One of these models is that of risk analysis. Risk analysis, as used in this context, encompasses assessment of the impact of a possible modification on certain software process attributes before actually changing a software process. Copyright  2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.