MylynSDP: Aiding Software Process Execution with Artifact Filtering, Degree of Interest Function and Task Context

Software process executions may be complex when the number of artifacts is high. In that case, to execute a software process activity, software engineers must search for suitable artifacts among several other available ones. The set of artifacts related to the execution of an activity is called activity context. The search for an activity context may be tiring, error-prone and time consuming. Moreover, activity execution may be interrupted by high priority activities or parallel execution, which results in a context change. That problem affects software engineers’ productivity because they spend additional time and effort on support work rather than activity execution. A Degree of Interest (DOI) function is a mechanism that scores and highlights elements according to predefined rules. It is useful to discover the context of an activity. An implementation of a DOI function can be found on Mylyn. However, Mylyn’s DOI function is aimed at implementation tasks only and it does not take into consideration the underlying software process that guides the development of the software product. Thus, this Master’s Degree Dissertation proposes a modification in software process execution with the use of a DOI function in order to help software engineer better locate artifacts relevant to a software process execution activity. The proposed DOI function is an extension of Mylyn’s DOI function and deals with activities and artifacts from all phases of software process. Moreover, the proposed DOI function is process-aware because it takes into consideration the executing software process in its workings. The final implementation was named MylynSDP. A validation study has been conducted to assess the concepts discussed in this work.