Analysis of Software-Engineering-Processes

Abstract

The German Aerospace Center (DLR) is one of the biggest software development facilities in Germany. Its employees create complex software using various development processes. To assure high software quality, innovative software engineering methods and tools need to be incorporated.

A current problem in the field of computer science is to identify the effectiveness of those methods and tools to ensure quality. An analysis of the incorporated processes is needed to determine which parts support the development and which parts can be improved. For this purpose, a system to record data provenance has been established in the past.

The goal of this thesis is the enhancement of the current analysis of provenance data. The existing model and infrastructure is revised by examining former work at the DLR, developing new questions about the process and analyzing the recorded data.

As a result, this thesis presents an overview of the software development process as a provenance graph. Existing and new questions are implemented in the graph query language Cypher. A compilation of model and recording flaws is exposed and convenient solutions are given.

The outcome of this thesis supports the verification of the development process and gives an overview of the capabilities and problems of the current provenance model. Further development is necessary to expand the expressiveness of the model and to answer more complex questions.