Acquisition of a Project-Specific Process

Abstract: Currently, proposed development processes are often considered too generic for operational use. This often leads to a misunderstanding of the project-specific processes and its refuse. One reason for non-appropriate project-specific processes is insufficient support for the tailoring of generic processes to project characteristics and context constraints. To tackle this problem, we propose a method for the acquisition of a project-specific process. This method uses a domain-specific process line for top-down process tailoring and supports bottom-up refinement of the defined generic process based on tracking process activities. The expected advantage of the method is tailoring efficiency gained by usage of a process line and higher process adherence gained by bottom-up adaptation of the process. The work described was conducted in the automotive domain. This article presents an overview of the so-called Emergent Process Acquisition method (EPAc) and sketches an initial validation study.