View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by RIT Scholar Works Rochester Institute of Technology RIT Scholar Works Presentations and other scholarship Faculty & Staff choS larship 2003 A Web-based process and process models to find and deliver information to improve the quality of flight software J. Scott aH wker Hong Ma Randy Smith Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.rit.edu/other Recommended Citation Scott aH wker, Hong Ma and Randy Smith. A Web-based process and process models to find nda deliver information to improve the quality of flight software. Institute of Electronics and Electrical Engineers (IEEE) This Conference Paper is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty & Staff choS larship at RIT Scholar Works. It has been accepted for inclusion in Presentations and other scholarship by an authorized administrator of RIT Scholar Works. For more information, please contact [email protected]. A WEB-BASED PROCESS AND PROCESS MODELS TO FIND AND DELIVER INFORMATION TO IMPROVE THE QUALITY OF FLIGHT SOFTWARE. J. Scott Hawker, Hong Ma, Randy K. Smith, University ofAlabama, Tuscaloosa, Alabama Abstract background information, including organizational standards, best practices, lessons leamed, and Aerospace systems demand high-quality training materials. The tool supports the software engineering processes to deliver high- instantiation of the process for specific projects, quality products. Although most aerospace allowing the process to be tailored for a project. organizations have high-quality processes, many of The project-specific instance can be coupled with a these processes fail to deliver to the engineer the workflow engine, allowing project-specific organization’s wealth of information and documents and products to be linked to the process. experience - information and experience that can further contribute to the quality of software To support the dynamic interaction and the products and engineering processes. In this paper, integration with a workflow engine requires that the: we present an interactive, web-based process process tool be more than a set of web pages. The support tool that delivers the information in a flight tool is based on a formal underlying model of the software engineering process as well as associated software engineering process activities, process standards, lessons leamed, and background information, and software artifacts in a project. Thc information. The tool is based on an underlying model enables additional capabilities, such as formal model of the software engineering process reasoning about the process and its execution, activities and artifacts. This underlying model assembling process instances kom reusable process provides a semantic basis for context-based search components, and supporting activity context- and for reasoning about the engineering process. specific search for additional information, such as The result is an information portal to search for and relevant standards and lessons learned or relevant deliver process and project-specific information to artifacts fiom prior projects. support the development of flight software. The process tool, then, becomes an information portal, providing the software engineer Introduction with a wealth of general and project-specific Aerospace systems demand high-quality information they need to follow their engineering software. A high-quality software engineering process in practice. This paper describes the design process helps assure the development of high- of such an information portal and the underlying quality software products. Most organizations information models. developing aerospace software have high-quality software engineering processes. However, many of Initial Prototypes these are incomplete in that there is a wealth of We have focused our implementation information and experience on software engineering prototypes on the Software Development Process techniques that can firther contribute to the quality Description (SDPD) [l] for a group that develops of the products and processes. This information is flight software. The SDPD defines their software not available in the context of the process. In engineering activities and procedures. We addition, many software engineering processes are prototyped a web portal that presents standards and difficult to use, and so they are not used as other information for use while performing SDPD- rigorously as they should be used. defined software design activities. We then In this paper, we describe an interactive, web- researched a number of standards for modelmg based software engineering process tool. The tool engineering processes and used their models as presents a software engineering process for the guidance toward a formal representation of development of space flight software. The tool also engineering activities and documents used. We re- links the process to associated techniques and characterized the SDPD software design activities 0-7803-7844-X/03/%17.000 ZOO3 IEEE 3.B.3-1 using this model, and we are now re-implementing Review Process the web portal prototype to be built on the Product(s)iDocument(s) Developed underlying model. We are now also enhancing the Tools model to capture the instantiation of the generic Measures process for a specific project to build a specific flight software product, and to describe how a Focusing on SDPD software design activities, generic process might be a tailoring or modification we developed a web portal prototype to deliver of another process. The next sections describe this information to activities with the above structure. series of models and web portals and the use of The development of the initial SDPD Web Portal standards to develop the models. prototype used HTML and Javascript as “hard- coded representations of the engineering activities Description of an Activity and associated information. The SDPD describes the software development Figure 1 shows a top-level view of the web process as a collection of activities that develop portal. The content of the process is presented in software artifacts (requirements, designs, the right-side pane. The user navigates the process implementation units, test cases, etc.) or that via a tree navigation menu in the left-side pane or support the engineering process (gathering metrics, via web links embedded in the content of the right- contract monitoring, defining the process, etc). The side pane. Additional information not in the activity defmitions follow a regular pattem of process, such as, the glossary, standards, lessons description: learned, document templates and examples, etc. are available via embedded links, links in the Activity Name and Purpose navigation tree, and links across the top of the page. Documents UsedRequired Figure 2 shows more detail in the navigation tree Task Description and shows the content and lmks associated with the Task Responsibility/Activities Preliminary Software Design task description. Figure 1. Web Portal Prototype Showing Process Content in the Right Pane, Process Navigation in the Left Pane, and Navigation to General Information in the Top Pane 3.B.3-2 .k" %3sw BisMa Meppr Welcome to ED14 Interactive Process eliminrry SOW+" DsrI~$nDescmionTask e Pietiminer/ Software Design phase wll bew in he ea* st8985 of me Software ReqUliBmems Definioon and i connue uno1 me compleoon of me project leyel Preliminary Design Rsnsw (PDR). In me Preliminaiy Software Slgn phase, the inlOB1 CSCi archltecfural design is defined and documenfed in be PretlmlnaiySobre DB51gn scnpson (SDD) document. NOTE . Allsoftwarerequlrementsdefined~nmeSRSmunbesaosfied~nmeso~redeslgnareaa Records. documemation pioceduie5. mdards. guidelines. forms and philo5oph1esmatmll be followed. maimainsd andloi adhered to dulingme design phase shall be documented in me project specific Sofmsie Development Plan ISDP) Figure 2. Web Portal Prototype Showing Details of Preliminary Software Design Activity Activity Models - Formality VML as the Common Representationfrom Underlying the user-visible web pages that mich All Others are Derived deliver the process and associated information is a We chose the Unified Modeling Language semantic model of the sohare engineering (UML) [2] as the basic knowledge representation process. The web pages are a visualization of the language for the underlying model. UML provides underlying model of activities and work products. a precise, yet understandable, way to represent and The underlying semantic model drives the user- visualize knowledge. We use UML to provide the interactive web pages, and software agents (such as common abstract representation of knowledge. search and workflow engines) that use the From these UML. models, we derive numerous underlying model augment the user interaction. concrete representations that implement the models as computer data structures and programs. The underlying model provides a foundation Specifically, our UML model identifies knowledge for a number of capabilities, including process elements and types of elements (objects and classes automation (via integration with a workflow in UML) and relationships between knowledge engine), dynamic assembly and tailoring of process elements (associations in UML). Some of the elements from reusable process components, formal models are then transformed to and implemented as reasoning about activity specifications and reusable Java and Per1 language programs. Some of the work products, semantic-based