Towards a Logical Schema Integrating Software Process Modelling and Software Measurement

This paper introduces a logical schema for the integration of software process modelling and software measurement. The schema promotes a common understanding of concepts and terminology, serving as a bridge across the fields of process modelling and software metrics. It presents a formal unified view of the major information entities and their inter-relationships. The schema is designed to be general enough to be used with a variety of different process modelling formalisms and metrics approaches. It incorporates several abstraction mechanisms to support the handling of complex process information and multiple evolving versions of that information. The schema should be useful for both researchers and practitioners in empirical process modelling studies of large-scale systems development and evolution. This paper concludes by contrasting our position with the conceptual schema developed at the Software Engineering Institute. The SEI schema has been a major influence on our work, but the paper also outlines some significant differences between their schema and our own position.