An MDA Proposal To Integrate the Measurement Lifecycle Into the Process Lifecycle

Abstract

Context: Measuring the Software Development Process (SDP) supports organizations in their endeavor to understand, manage, and improve their development processes and projects. In the last decades, the SDP has evolved to meet the market needs and keep abreast of modern technologies and infrastructures. These changes in the development processes have increased the importance of the measurement and caused changes in the measurement process and the used measures. Objective: This work aims to develop a solution to support the measurement activities throughout the process lifecycle. Method: Study the current state of the art to identify existing gaps. Then, propose a solution to support the process measurement throughout the SDP lifecycle. Results: The proposed solution consists of two main components: (i) Measurement lifecycle, which defines the measurement activities throughout the SDP lifecycle, (ii) Measurement definition metamodel (MDMM), which supports the measurement lifecycle and its integration into the process lifecycle. Conclusion: This proposal allows organizations to define, manage, and improve their processes; the proposed information model supports the unification of the measurement concepts and vocabulary. The defined measurement lifecycle provides a comprehensive guide for the organizations to establish the measurement objectives and carry out the necessary activities to achieve them. The proposed MDMM supports and guides the engineers in the complete and operational definition of the measurement concepts.