Hierarchical process patterns: construct software processes in a stepwise way

Patterns are widely used to capture design decisions and rationale of software, but they could also be used to document and guide the development of software process. This paper proposes a framework called hierarchical process patterns (HPP), which includes three types of pattern: lifecycle pattern, activity pattern, and workflow pattern. This division makes it easier to tailor and refine software processes in a stepwise way. To describe the workflow of process pattern and relationships between roles and artifacts of realized activity and those of sub activities, this paper presents a set of representation mechanism and defines role inheritance diagram and artifact decomposition diagram. To support variable number of same category of activities, this paper introduce parameterized compound activity in workflow pattern. Finally, this paper gives an example to illustrate how to apply the framework in SPDM, which is a process-centered software engineering environment.