About reuse in multi-paradigm process modelling approach

Abstract

Process model reuse has become a hot topic in the process community. As far as we are concerned, reuse has found its origin within the practical framework of software quality improvement we are involved in as participants of the PERFECT project. The objective of this project is to define a conceptual approach (PERFECT Improvement Approach), in which process improvement is justified as a means towards product improvement, and is implemented through the concepts of goal-oriented measurement, learning, packaging of explicit experience and reuse. Reuse is therefore a main concern that must be made explicit and well formalized for all of the process aspects, i.e., product, activity, role and measurement aspects. While reuse of product, role and measurement models did not cause us much trouble (owing to the object-orientation of their representation), reusing activities has been rather problematic. The work reported in this paper emphasizes the main issues we encountered in our experience facing the problem of process reuse. Our experience has been acquired through the design, implementation and evaluation of two major versions of the APEL tool; a textual and graphical language for describing and enacting process models.