Scoping software process lines

Defining organization-specific process standards by integrating, harmonizing, and standardizing heterogeneous and often implicit processes is an important task, especially for large development organizations. On the one hand, such a standard must be generic enough to cover all of the organization's development activities; on the other hand, it must be as detailed and precise as possible to support employees' daily work. Today, organizations typically maintain and advance a plethora of individual processes, each addressing specific problems. This requires enormous effort, which could be spent more efficiently. This article introduces an approach for developing a Software Process Line that, similar to a Software Product Line, promises to reduce the complexity and thus, the effort required for managing the processes of a software organization. We propose Scoping, Modeling, and Architecting the Software Process Line as major steps, and describe in detail the Scoping approach we recommend, based on an analysis of the potential products to be produced in the future, the projects expected in the future, and the respective process capabilities needed. In addition, the article sketches experience from determining the scope of space process standards for satellite software development. Finally, it discusses the approach, draws conclusions, and gives an outlook on future work. © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.