A Framework for Modeling Software Engineering Processes

Summary—Software engineering processes must be understood to be managed effectively. It is important to go beyond purely metaphorical and descriptive methods to achieve such understanding. This paper proposes a framework, based on dynamic feedback control systems, for building potentially quantitative models of software engineering processes. It then uses this framework to explore some important characteristics of quantifiable outputs of such processes, including observability, measurability, independence, (near) continuity, and (near) monotonicity. General Terms—Software engineering, process modeling.