Metamodeling and measurement for the software process improvement

Summary form only given. Software development and maintenance organizations are more and more concerned about software process assessment and improvement when they are promoting the improvement in the quality of their final products. Software process assessment and improvement are very complex activities due to the great number of different aspects to be considered. In order to manage this complexity, it is useful to establish a conceptual architecture, which includes all the aspects necessary. This conceptual architecture must involve the definition of the metamodels and models necessary in order to carry out an assessment and improvement process in an effective and integrated way. We present a conceptual architecture of four abstraction levels to represent and manage the assessment and improvement of the software process. The management of the concepts involved in the conceptual architecture is provided by MANTIS-Metamod, which is a component of MANTIS, an integral environment for the management of the Software Maintenance Process (SMP).