Toward Inconsistency Awareness in Collaborative Software Development

Change management is a key issue in collaborative software development. In a collaborative work, the fact that many change processes applied to shared artifacts are executed concurrently leads to the inconsistency problem. Most of previous studies addressed only conflicts, a type of inconsistency caused by concurrent change activities on shared artifacts. In this paper, we define patterns of inconsistency, including conflict patterns, concerning the change context instead of only concurrent change activities. To deal with these inconsistencies, we propose an approach that is a combination of the process support approach and awareness support approach. We model change processes as Change Support Workflows (CSWs) and manage their execution. We then introduce a Change Support Model (CSM) based on this approach. CSM is a model of a dynamic workflow management system. In CSM, inconsistency awareness is implemented using workspace awareness and context awareness techniques. Requirements, static model, architecture, and dynamic model of CSM are also specified. Our approach will help workers to implement changes more safely and efficiently in collaborative environments.