Structuring the Knowledge for Software Process Appraisal towards Semi-Automated Support

Abstract

© 2017 IEEE. A process of software process appraisal intensively requires tacit knowledge and expertise from appraisal team to collect data, review documents, interview appraisal participants, analyze, verify and validate objective evidence. In an attempt to automate such a process, the knowledge inherent in it must be made explicit and machine-processable. This paper explains how to structure the knowledge for software process appraisal in such a way that we can apply inference engine based on the formal concept analysis (FCA). Thus, we can use the engine to determine the relations between process activities and standard practices to which they pertain from the knowledge. The structured knowledge and its automated inference will help reduce the efforts in examining information about the practices implemented and relate the resultant data to the appraisal reference model.