Techniques for process model evolution in EPOS

The authors categorize some aspects of software process evolution and customization, and describe how they are handled in the EPOS PM system. Comparisons are made to other PM systems. A process model in EPOS consists of a schema of classes and meta-classes, and its model entities and relationships. There is an underlying software engineering database, EPOSDB, offering uniform versioning of all model parts and a context of nested cooperating transactions. Then, there is a reflective object-oriented process specification language, on top of the EPOSDB. Policies for model creation, composition, change, instantiation, refinement, and enaction are explicitly represented and are used by a set of PM automatic tools. The main tools are a planner to instantiate tasks, an execution manager to enact such tasks, and a PM manager to define, analyze, customize, and evolve the process schema