PROCESS CLUSTERING WITH AN ALGORITHM-BASED ON A COUPLING METRIC

Process management has received considerable attention in recent years as a means to improve productivity and quality in the software industry. Quite often, it might be advantageous to group related processes to reduce and control the amount of effort needed to measure and manage the processes in the organization. Here we present an algorithm for grouping processes into process clusters. The article begins with the development of a coupling metric that measures the strength of the linkage between processes. Next, the algorithm is presented. Finally, we report on the results obtained while analyzing the processes in a large software development organization.