Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Book cover

Software Project Management in a Changing World pp 157–192Cite as

Supporting Project Management Through Integrated Management of System and Project Knowledge

  • Chapter
  • First Online:

Abstract

Software engineering is a knowledge-intensive task. Many different kinds of knowledge are created, for example, system knowledge, such as requirements, design, or code, and project knowledge, such as project plans, decisions, and work items. In this chapter, we study two kinds of project knowledge: work items and decisions. Work items document what should or has been done by whom and when. Decisions represent the solution to a decision problem. They are important to be kept in mind so that the future development will be consistent with the past. These kinds of knowledge can be implicit or explicit. Work items are typically managed explicitly in issue trackers, while decisions are mostly hidden in informal notes or in the artifacts, which result from these decisions. Rationale management research has suggested several approaches to make decisions and their rationale explicit. However, in contrast to issue trackers, which are widespread, these approaches are considered as overhead in industry. In this chapter, we argue that work items and decisions should be managed together with the system knowledge. This has several benefits for project management processes, such as project planning or monitoring, for example, with better information for the allocation of work items or risk identification. We present a vision detailing these benefits and discuss what is known in research and practice about the realization of this vision. In particular, we review existing approaches to capture work items or decisions and their links to other knowledge and discuss the empirical evidence of their benefits for an integrated system and project knowledge management in industry.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD   54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    http://www.eclipse.org/mylyn/

  2. 2.

    http://tasktop.com

  3. 3.

    http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/home.jsp

  4. 4.

    http://dl.acm.org/

  5. 5.

    http://www.springerlink.com/

  6. 6.

    http://www.sciencedirect.com/

  7. 7.

    http://msrconf.org/

  8. 8.

    http://www.worldscientific.com/worldscinet/ijseke

  9. 9.

    http://www.users.muohio.edu/burgeje/SEURAT/

  10. 10.

    http://www.archium.net/

  11. 11.

    http://triana.escet.urjc.es/ADDSS/

  12. 12.

    http://www.ict.swin.edu.au/personal/atang/AREL-Tool.zip

References

  • Aurum A, Jefferey R, Wohlin C, Handzic M (eds) (2003) Managing software engineering knowledge. Springer, Berlin

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Aurum A, Wohlin C, Porter A (2006) Aligning software project decisions: a case study. Int J Softw Eng Knowl Eng 16(6):795–818

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Babar MA, Gorton I (2007) A tool for managing software architecture knowledge. In: SHARK/ADI’07: 2nd workshop on sharing and reusing architectural knowledge - architecture, rationale, and design. IEEE, Minneapolis, MN

    Google Scholar 

  • Babar MA, Gorton I, Kitchenham B (2006) A framework for supporting architecture knowledge and rationale management. In: Dutoit AH, McCall R, Mistrik I, Paech B (eds) Rationale management in software engineering. Springer, Berlin

    Google Scholar 

  • Babar MA, de Boer RC, Dingsoyr T, Farenhorst R (2007) Architectural knowledge management strategies: approaches in research and industry. In: SHARK/ADI’07: 2nd workshop on sharing and reusing architectural knowledge - architecture, rationale, and design. IEEE, Minneapolis, MN

    Google Scholar 

  • Bachmann A, Bird C, Rahman F, Devanbu P, Bernstein A (2010) The missing links: bugs and bug-fix commits. In: FSE: 18th ACM SIGSOFT international symposium on foundations of software engineering, pp 97–106

    Google Scholar 

  • Bangcharoensap P, Ihara A, Kamei Y, Matsumoto K (2012) Locating source code to be fixed based on initial bug reports - a case study on the eclipse project. In: International workshop on empirical software engineering in practice, pp 10–15

    Google Scholar 

  • Bettenburg N, Just S, Schröter A, Weiss C, Premraj R, Zimmermann T (2008) What makes a good bug report? In: FSE: 16th ACM SIGSOFT international symposium on foundations of software engineering. ACM, New York, NY, pp 308–318

    Google Scholar 

  • Bjørnson FO, Dingsøyr T (2008) Knowledge management in software engineering: a systematic review of studied concepts, findings and research methods used. Inf Softw Technol 50:1055–1068

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Burge JE, Brown DC (2004) An integrated approach for software design checking using design rationale. In: First international conference of design computing and cognition, pp 557–576

    Google Scholar 

  • Burge JE, Brown DC (2008) Software engineering using RATionale. J Syst Softw 81(3):395–413

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Burge JE, Carroll JM, McCall R, Mistrik I (2008) Rationale-based software engineering. Springer, Berlin

    Book  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Canfora G, Cerulo L (2005) Impact analysis by mining software and change request repositories. In: 11th IEEE international symposium software metrics, Como, pp 21–29

    Google Scholar 

  • Canfora G, Cerulo L (2006) Jimpa: an eclipse plug-in for impact analysis. In: CSMR: 10th European conference on software maintenance and reengineering, Bari, pp 340–342

    Google Scholar 

  • Canfora G, Casazza G, de Lucia A (2000) A design rationale based environment for cooperative maintenance. Int J Softw Eng Knowl Eng 10(5):627–645

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Capilla R, Nava F, Duenas JC (2007) Modeling and documenting the evolution of architectural design decisions. In: SHARK/ADI’07: 2nd workshop on sharing and reusing architectural knowledge - architecture, rationale, and design. IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC

    Google Scholar 

  • Capilla R, Zimmermann O, Zdun U, Avgeriou P, Kuester JM (2011) An enhanced architectural knowledge metamodel linking architectural design decisions to other artifacts in the software engineering lifecycle. In: ECSA: 5th european conference on software architecture, Essen, Germany, pp 303–318

    Google Scholar 

  • Carroll JM, Rosson MB (1992) Getting around the task-artifact cycle: how to make claims and design by scenario. ACM Trans Inf Syst 10(2):181–212

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cleland-Huang J, Gotel O, Zisman A (eds) (2012) Software and systems traceability. Springer, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Davies S, Roper M, Wood M (2012) Using bug report similarity to enhance bug localisation. In: WCRE: working conference on reverse engineering, Kingston, pp 125–134

    Google Scholar 

  • Delater A, Paech B (2013a) Analyzing the tracing of requirements and source code during software development: a research preview. In: REFSQ’13: 19th international working conference on requirements engineering: foundation for software quality, LNCS, vol 7830. Springer, Berlin, pp 308–314

    Google Scholar 

  • Delater A, Paech B (2013b) Tracing requirements and source code during software development: an empirical study. In: ESEM’13: 7th ACM/IEEE international symposium on empirical software engineering and measurement, Baltimore, MD, pp 24–35

    Google Scholar 

  • Delater A, Paech B (2013c) UNICASE trace client: a CASE tool integrating requirements engineering, project management and code implementation. In: Workshop Nutzung und Nutzen von Traceability. Lecture notes in informatics, vol 215. GI, pp 459–463

    Google Scholar 

  • Delater A, Narayan N, Paech B (2012) Tracing requirements and source code during software development. In: ICSEA’12: 7th international conference of software engineering advances, pp 274–282

    Google Scholar 

  • Duncan WR (2013) A guide to the project management body of knowledge (PMBOK® guide), 5th edn. Project Management Institute (PMI)

    Google Scholar 

  • Dutoit AH, Paech B (2001) Rationale management in software engineering. In: Chang SK (ed) Handbook of software engineering and knowledge engineering, vol 1. World Scientific, Singapore

    Google Scholar 

  • Dutoit AH, McCall R, Mistrik I, Paech B (eds) (2006) Rationale management in software engineering. Springer, Berlin

    Google Scholar 

  • Falessi D, Becker M, Cantone G (2006a) Design decision rationale: experiences and steps ahead towards systematic use. SIGSOFT Softw Eng Notes 31(5)

    Google Scholar 

  • Falessi D, Cantone G, Becker M (2006b) Documenting design decision rationale to improve individual and team design decision making. In: ISESE’06: international symposium on empirical software engineering. ACM Press, New York, pp 134–143

    Google Scholar 

  • Falessi D, Cantone G, Kruchten P (2008a) Value-based design decision rationale documentation: principles and empirical feasibility study. In: WICSA 08: seventh working IEEE/IFIP conference on software architecture. IEEE, Vancouver, BC, pp 189–198

    Google Scholar 

  • Falessi D, Capilla R, Cantone G (2008b) A value-based approach for documenting design decisions rationale. In: SHARK’08: 3rd international workshop on Sharing and reusing architectural knowledge. ACM Press, New York, pp 63–70

    Google Scholar 

  • Falessi D, Cantone G, Kazman R, Kruchten P (2011) Decision-making techniques for software architecture design: a comparative survey. ACM Comput Surv 43(4):Article 33

    Google Scholar 

  • Gervasi V, Gacitua R, Rouncefield M, Sawyer P, Kof L, Li M, Piwek P, De Roeck A, Willis A, Hui Y, Nuseibeh B (2013) Unpacking tacit knowledge for requirements engineering. In: Maalej W, Thurimella AK (eds) Managing requirements knowledge. Springer, Heidelberg, pp 23–48

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Gethers M, Kagdi H, Dit B, Poshyvanyk D (2011) An adaptive approach to impact analysis from change requests to source code. In: ASE: 26th IEEE/ACM international conference on automated software engineering, Lawrence, KS, pp 540–543

    Google Scholar 

  • Gethers M, Dit B, Kagdi H, Pashyvanyk D (2012) Integrated impact analysis for managing software changes. In: ICSE: international conference on software engineering. IEEE, Piscataway, NJ, pp 430–440

    Google Scholar 

  • Gotel O, Finkelstein A (1994) An analysis of the requirements traceability problem. In: First international conference on requirements engineering, Colorado Springs, CO, pp 94–101

    Google Scholar 

  • Hassan, AE (2008) The road ahead for mining software repositories. In: FoSM’08: frontiers of software maintenance, Beijing, pp 48–57

    Google Scholar 

  • Helming J, David J, Koegel M, Naughton H (2009a) Integrating system modeling with project management - a case study. In: COMPSAC’09: international computer software and applications conference. IEEE Computer Society, Seattle, WA, pp 571–578

    Google Scholar 

  • Helming J, Koegel M, Naughton H (2009b) Towards traceability from project management to system models. In: TEFSE’09: ICSE workshop on traceability in emerging forms of software engineering. IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC, pp 11–15

    Google Scholar 

  • Helming J, Koegel M, Naughton H, David J, Shterev A, Bruegge B (2009c) Traceability-based change awareness. In: MODELS’09: 12th international conference on model driven engineering languages and systems. Springer, Berlin, pp 372–376

    Google Scholar 

  • Helming J, Arndt H, Hodaie Z, Koegel M, Narayan N (2010) Automatic assignment of work items. In: ENASE’10: evaluation of novel approaches to software engineering. Communications in computer and information science. Springer, Berlin, pp 236–250

    Google Scholar 

  • Jansen A, Bosch J (2005) Software architecture as a set of architectural design decisions. In: WICSA’05: 5th working conference on software architecture. IEEE, Pittsburgh, PA, pp 109–120

    Google Scholar 

  • Jansen A, Bosch J, Avgeriou P (2008) Documenting after the fact: recovering architectural design decisions. J Syst Softw 81(4):536–557

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jansen A, Avgeriou P, van der Ven JS (2009) Enriching software architecture documentation. J Syst Softw 82(8):1232–1248

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kagdi H, Poshyvanyk D (2009) Who can help me with this change request? In: ICPC: 17th international conference on program comprehension. IEEE, Vancouver, BC, pp 273–277

    Google Scholar 

  • Kaushik N, Tahvildari L, Moore M (2011) Reconstructing traceability between bugs and test cases: an experimental study. In: WCRE: 18th working conference on reverse engineering, Limerick, pp 411–414

    Google Scholar 

  • Kitchenham B, Charters S (2007) Guidelines for performing systematic literature reviews in software engineering. Technical report EBSE-2007-01. School of Computer Science and Mathematics, Keele University

    Google Scholar 

  • Klein G (2008) Naturalistic decision making. J Hum Fact Ergon Soc 50(10):456–460

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Könemann P (2009) Integrating decision management with UML modeling concepts and tools. In: Joint working IEEE/IFIP conference on software architecture & European conference on software architecture. IEEE, Cambridge, pp 297–300

    Google Scholar 

  • Kruchten P, Lago P, van Vliet H (2006) Building up and reasoning about architectural knowledge. In: Hofmeister C, Crnkovic I, Reussner R (eds) Quality of software architectures, vol 4214, Lecture notes in computer science. Springer, Berlin, pp 43–58

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Lee J (1991) Extending the Potts and Bruns model for recording design rationale. In: ICSE: 13th international conference on software engineering, pp 114–125

    Google Scholar 

  • Lindvall M, Rus I (2003) Knowledge management for software organizations. In: Aurum A, Jefferey R, Wohlin C, Handzic M (eds) Managing software engineering knowledge. Springer, Berlin, pp 73–94

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Lipshitz R, Klein G, Orasanu J, Salas E (2011) Taking stock of naturalistic decision making. J Behav Decis Mak 14(5):331–352

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • López C, Codocedo V, Astudillo H, Cysneiros LM (2012) Bridging the gap between software architecture rationale formalisms and actual architecture documents: an ontology-driven approach. Sci Comput Program 77(1):66–80

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • MacLean A, Young RM, Victoria ME, Moran TP (1991) Questions, options, and criteria: elements of design space analysis. Hum Comput Interact 6(3–4):201–250

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Maeder P, Egyed A (2011) Do software engineers benefit from source code navigation with traceability? - an experiment in software change management. In: ASE: 26th IEEE/ACM international conference on automated software engineering, Lawrence, KS, pp 444–447

    Google Scholar 

  • Maeder P, Gotel O (2012) Ready-to-use traceability on evolving projects. In: Cleland-Huang J, Gotel O, Zisman A (eds) Software and systems traceability. Springer, New York, pp 173–194

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Mentis HM, Bach PM, Hoffman B, Rosson MB, Carroll JM (2009) Development of decision rationale in complex group decision-making. In: CHI: 27th international conference on human factors in computing systems. ACM, New York, pp 1341–1350

    Google Scholar 

  • Menzies T, Zimmermann TH (2013) Software analytics: so what? Guest editor introduction, special issue. IEEE Softw 30(4):31–37

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ngo T, Ruhe G (2005) Decision support in requirements engineering. In: Aurum A, Wohlin C (eds) Engineering and managing software requirements. Springer, Berlin

    Google Scholar 

  • Nguyen THD, Adams B, Hassan AE (2010) A case study of bias in bug-fix datasets. In: WCRE: 7th working conference on reverse engineering, Beverly, MA, pp 259–268

    Google Scholar 

  • PMI (2013) Software extension to the PMBOK guide, 5th edn. IEEE Computer Society, Project Management Institute (PMI)

    Google Scholar 

  • Rockwell J, Grosse IR, Krishnamurty S, Wileden JC (2009) A Decision Support Ontology for collaborative decision making in engineering design. In: International symposium on collaborative technologies and systems. IEEE, Baltimore, MD, pp 1–9

    Google Scholar 

  • Saaty T (1990) How to make a decision: the analytic hierarchy process. Eur J Oper Res 48(1):9–26

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Skerrett I (2011) The eclipse foundation. The eclipse community survey 2011. http://www.eclipse.org/org/press-release/20110610_survey.php

  • Smith JL, Bohner SA, McCrickard DS (2005) Project management for the 21st century: supporting collaborative design through risk analysis. ACM Southe Conf 43(2):300–305

    Google Scholar 

  • Sureka A, Lal S, Agarwal L (2011) Applying Fellegi-Sunter (FS) model for traceability link recovery between bug databases and version archives. In: APSEC: 18th Asia Pacific software engineering conference, Ho Chi Minh, pp 146–153

    Google Scholar 

  • Tang A, Babar MA, Gorton I, Han J (2006) A survey of architecture design rationale. J Syst Softw 79(12):1792–1804

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tang A, Jin Y, Han J (2007) A rationale-based architecture model for design traceability and reasoning. J Syst Softw 80(6):918–934

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tang A, Avgeriou P, Jansen A, Capilla R, Babar MA (2010) A comparative study of architecture knowledge management tools. J Syst Softw 83(3):352–370

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tyree J, Akerman A (2005) Architecture decisions: demystifying architecture. IEEE Softw 22(2):19–27

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wang W, Burge JE (2010) Using rationale to support pattern-based architectural design. In: SHARK’10: ICSE workshop on sharing and reusing architectural knowledge. ACM Press, New York, pp 1–8

    Google Scholar 

  • Yadla S, Hayes JH, Dekhtyar A (2005) Tracing requirements to defect reports: an application of information retrieval techniques. Innov Syst Softw Eng 1:116–124

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zannier C, Maurer F (2006) Foundations of agile decision making from agile mentors and developers. In: Abrahamsson P, Marchesi M, Succi G (eds) Extreme programming and agile processes in software engineering. Springer, Berlin, pp 11–20

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Zannier C, Chiasson M, Maurer F (2007) A model of design decision-making based on empirical results of interviews with software designers. Inf Softw Technol 49(6):637–653

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zimmermann O, Gschwind T, Küster J, Leymann F, Schuster N (2007) Reusable architectural decision models for enterprise application development. In: Overhage S, Szyperski CA, Reussner R, Stafford JA (eds) Software architectures, components, and applications. Springer, Berlin, pp 15–32

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

This work was partially supported by the DFG (German Research Foundation) under the Priority Programme SPP1593: Design for Future—Managed Software Evolution. We thank the reviewers for their helpful comments.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Computer Science, University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany

    Barbara Paech, Alexander Delater & Tom-Michael Hesse

Authors
  1. Barbara Paech
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Alexander Delater
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Tom-Michael Hesse
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Barbara Paech .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada

    Günther Ruhe

  2. Blekinge Institute of Technology, Karlskrona, Sweden

    Claes Wohlin

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2014 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Paech, B., Delater, A., Hesse, TM. (2014). Supporting Project Management Through Integrated Management of System and Project Knowledge. In: Ruhe, G., Wohlin, C. (eds) Software Project Management in a Changing World. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-55035-5_7

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-55035-5_7

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-55034-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-55035-5

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation