This dissertation addresses two problems of distributed software development projects: Inconsistencies between related artifacts such as documents and models and the inefficient collaboration of distributed project participants. In particular informal communication is reduced and project knowledge gets lost. The interaction and integration of existing methods and modeling tools are currently insufficient to address these problems.
We claim that a single consistent representation, supporting a unified data model for all documents and models including collaboration artifacts, helps to overcome these problems. In existing methods, collaboration artifacts are usually treated separately and maintained apart from the system model artifacts. As all artifacts are represented in one unified model, it is possible to implicitly capture and maintain artifact relationships as dependency traces. The dependency traces are used to support consistency of related artifacts. Informal collaboration artifacts, such as comments, and formal discussions for representing rationale, are externalized and also part of the unified data model.
This dissertation describes an extendable meta-model as a single consistent representation. Based on the meta-model we introduce the RUSE model, which integrates system models, collaboration models and organizational models. The meta-model and the RUSE model are realized in a tool called Sysiphus. Sysiphus was used in several academic and industrial software development projects as well as for teaching software engineering.
«
This dissertation addresses two problems of distributed software development projects: Inconsistencies between related artifacts such as documents and models and the inefficient collaboration of distributed project participants. In particular informal communication is reduced and project knowledge gets lost. The interaction and integration of existing methods and modeling tools are currently insufficient to address these problems.
We claim that a single consistent representation, supporting a...
»