Dear PPIG'ler, there's a growing interest in the software engineering research community what we currently term "micro-process of software engineering". It's about studying and observing what a programmer/developer is actually doing to develop software: changing code, compiling, running test cases, making pauses, discussing with colleagues, etc, etc. The research is on discoving typical patterns of work and evaluating these in terms of quality considerations or compliance with process models. (In the next PPIG newsletter I will introduce this in a bit more detail.)
Meanwhile, we are not happy with the term "micro-process" anymore because "process" in software engineering usually means a *planned* procedure. Additionally, "micro-process" is already being used in a different manner elsewhere. I wonder whether the "doing" should better be termed as * software development behavior (=> behavior patterns) or * software development activities (=> activity patterns) What's the difference between "behavior" and "activity"? And what about "action"; are programmers performing "actions" while coding, comprehending, or testing? Automated processes (for example nightly builds) are also "developing" software: Do machines "behave"? What would you prefer? Is there any accepted term for this concept? Any suggestion is welcome. Sebastian -- Software Engineering Working Group Institut für Informatik Freie Universitaet Berlin Takustr. 9, 14195 Berlin, Germany +49 30 838 75239 http://www.inf.fu-berlin.de/~jekutsch ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PPIG Discuss List ([email protected]) Discuss admin: http://limitlessmail.net/mailman/listinfo/discuss Announce admin: http://limitlessmail.net/mailman/listinfo/announce PPIG Discuss archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/discuss%40ppig.org/
