Abstract The International Conference on Software and System Processes (ICSSP) provides a leading forum for the exchange of research outcomes and industrial best practices in process development from software and systems disciplines. ICSSP 2018 was held in Gothenburg, Sweden, May 26 to 27, 2018, colocated with the 40th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE). The theme of ICSSP 2018 was studying “Demands on Processes, Processes on Demand” by recognizing the demands on processes that include the need for both well‐developed plans and incremental deliveries (agile and hybrid processes), utilization of increased automation (model‐based engineering and DevOps), higher degrees of customer collaboration, comprehensive analysis of existing products for reuse (open source and COTS), and performance requirements of enterprise‐level architectures. This special issue includes the revised and extended versions of the five highest ranked full research papers and industry experience papers of ICSSP 2018, including the two award‐winning papers.

A normal tension exists between a corporate need for process commonality and local needs for process customization. Unifying diverse software processes to produce process commonality is challenging. A group seeking to create a common development process must consider issues such as a rationale for process commonality, how to design a process for balancing commonality and customization, how to analyze existing diverse processes, and whether and how to measure process commonality. Altschuller’s Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ) is explored for resolving the contradiction between process commonality and diversity and examples from the literature are cited.

Agile software development grew out of a variety of alternative software development methods that shared a common set of values and principles. After two decades, agile software development remains loosely defined, but has been widely accepted. This acceptance has gained the attention of other fields with discussions of applying agile to their work, for example agile systems engineering and agile program management. However, agile was defined in terms of software development, both in practice and in principle. Therefore, translation into other fields has been challenging. This paper derives a set of agile characteristics and discusses two benefits of accepting such a set of characteristics for (a) application of agile to other fields beyond software development and (b) for measurement of agility.

Static representations of development processes provide a basis for communication and coordination of work, as well as for planning work. However, they do not provide any information about the actual behavior of a project, including the effects of staffing decisions, quality-inducing activities, delays, resource contentions, and so forth. Software process simulation (SPS) has demonstrated the capability for providing insight to the dynamics of software projects and supporting project management decisions. This tutorial is a SPS introduction that emphasizes practical approaches to modeling and simulation for both researchers and practitioners. We will discuss modeling and simulation, types of simulation, an historical overview of SPS, the disciplines that contribute to successful SPS work, modeling constructs commonly used to represent software development dynamics, and methods for conducting a SPS project.

ABSTRACT Rework is inherent in product development, but estimation of the duration and required resources for rework cycles is inhibited by task size variation, process capacity variation, and the process characteristics of dynamism and concurrency. This difficulty is especially evident in testing of software‐intensive systems. Dynamic modeling of test‐and‐fix cycles has addressed this problem by providing good forecasting of test phase durations and by providing good results in supporting resource allocation and process improvement decisions. A generalized model of test‐and‐fix phases has been produced from an analysis of commonality and variation in six project models. The generalized model can be configured to support test phase planning of duration and resources. This paper extends the work reported in ICSSP 2012 by reporting results of experiments on managing test‐and‐fix projects through work‐in‐process limits and through test case prioritization. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

ABSTRACT Software process simulation (SPS) has been evolving over the past two decades after being introduced to the software engineering community in the 1980s. At that time the SPS technology attracted a great deal of interest from both academics and practitioners in the software process community—even to the extent of being one of the recommended techniques for achieving multiple Key Process Areas of Level 4 of the Capability Maturity Model Integration. However, in recent years, the growth of SPS seems to have slowed along with the number of reported applications in industry. This article summarizes the special panel that was held during ICSSP 2012 whose goals were to assess whether this technology remains applicable to today's software engineering projects and challenges and to point out the most beneficial opportunities for future research and industry application. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Although some researchers have studied agile techniques of software development using simulation, simulation studies of actual agile projects are difficult to find. This report on an industrial case study seeks to address this need by presenting an experience of modeling and analyzing an agile software development process using discrete event simulation. The study, undertaken for software process improvement, produced analyses that provided project management with process capability information. First, a sensitivity analysis used a designed experiment to measure the dominant factors in user story productivity. Second, a response surface provided information on the process tolerance for defect rework. Finally, a scenario comparison supported a management decision on sprint usage.

Rework is integral to product development. The dynamism, circularity and concurrency properties of rework cycles inhibit attempts to estimate the duration and resources required of development phases. This difficulty is especially evident in testing of software-intensive systems. Dynamic modeling of test-and-fix cycles has addressed this problem and provided good forecasting of test phase durations, but has also produced good results in supporting resource allocation and process improvement decisions. A different model was produced for each of six projects. Though models of test-and-fix processes can be very detailed, a basic model of common elements has been identified through an analysis of commonality and variation in the six project models. The analysis has been used to specify a generalized test-and-fix model.

The young field of software process simulation was born out of research that stimulated the imagination of many researchers who created a vision for addressing “the software problem.” Though the vision has yet to be realized widely, the need for the field is growing and benefits are being seen slowly. Opportunity for continued growth of this field lies in the reciprocity between research and industrial practice. An agenda for advancing software process simulation through this reciprocity is offered.

SUMMARY A software development organization's process trustworthiness can be enhanced through development project retrospectives or postmortems, which seek to produce lessons from mistakes and successes in the project performance. Tool support for such retrospectives is usually limited to qualitative analysis. A new model, Dynamic COQUALMO, offers quantitative support through a defectivity profile that can be calibrated to a project's actual profile of defects found over time. The model inputs can then be varied to represent alternative project decisions and conditions, providing a basis for estimating the effects of project improvements on product quality. This paper describes Dynamic COQUALMO and demonstrates its use in a project retrospective. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Process simulation has become a powerful technology in support of software project management and process improvement over the past decades. This research, inspired by the Impact Project, intends to investigate the technology transfer of software process simulation to the use in industrial settings, and further identify the best practices to release its full potential in software practice. We collected the reported applications of process simulation in software industry, and identified its wide adoption in the organizations delivering various software intensive systems. This paper, as an initial report of the research, briefs a historical perspective of the impact upon practice based on the documented evidence, and also elaborates the research-practice transition by examining one detailed case study. It is shown that research has a significant impact on practice in this area. The analysis of impact trace also reveals that the success of software process simulation in practice highly relies on the association with other software process techniques or practices and the close collaboration between researchers and practitioners.

A systems engineering process model for the acquisition of large, complex systems for the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) is being adapted for ongoing experiments in acquisition process policies. The discrete-event simulation model of the larger "enterprise of acquisition" for weapon systems has a broad scope from program beginning through development. It reveals some of the challenges and risks in weapon system acquisition.