Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
Design Process Review (6
th
stage), he assesses himself to a maturity level of 4 -
Autonomous - (level 2 - Notions - was reached at the end of the 3
rd
stage, and level 3 -
User - after the Exemplary Design Activity). The availability of accurate competency
level provides valuable information for the project manager in order to assign tasks to
team members.
Recording other assessments.
The most valuable information is provided with the
meeting report. They are recorded using a semantic wiki through a semantic form.
Links to other resources (person, artifact, process ...) are very easy to establish and to
update. It provides an ordering scheme and new navigation features.
6 Conclusion and Perspectives
We proposed to adapt the course-of-action framework to software engineers' activity
in Very Small Enterprises (VSEs). An observatory collects the data necessary to study
the course of action therefore including continuous observations of the behavior of
action and communication in a work situation as well as different kinds of instigated
verbalizations (transcript in a written form) from the actors which would provide
access to other elements such as interpretations, feelings, judgments. As a case study,
the activity of a team of 6 young software engineers accompanied with two partici-
pants-to-observe is currently recorded in the observatory. As units of courses of ac-
tion are significant units for the actor, we choose to breakdown the whole course-of-
action in units based on individual performed activities.
A further study will use these data to proceed with the analysis of course-of-action,
using a theoretical framework, described as semio-logical. This framework will make
possible to explain the global dynamics - or composition - of the courses of action units,
their local dynamics - or generation - and the linkage between these two dynamics.
The current state of this work - the building and the filling of an observatory of the
part of the agent's observable activity that is pre-reflexive (i.e. presentable, account-
able and commentable) - let suggest that analysis will lead (1) to specify the modali-
ties of engineers' interaction with life cycle processes leading to the design of better
interaction or of corrective situations and (2) to contradict or support the reconstruc-
tion by the engineer of his/her own activity, i.e. going from “pre-reflective conscious-
ness” of the actor towards a reflective attitude.
Thus, we may think that observing and analyzing software engineer's activity help
to reveal his/her theory-in-use [10] - what governs engineers' behavior and tends to be
tacit structures - that we may call Project Processes-in-use in a VSE. The unit break-
down of course-of-action is based on performed activities related to a simple Process
Reference Model issued from the ISO/IEC 12207:2008 standard. We made the hy-
pothesis that this standard constitutes the “espoused theory” of software engineers.
So, the course-of-action framework may help engineers to establish a link between
his/her “Project Processes-in-use” and “espoused Process Reference Model” and
contribute to reduce the fit between a project-in-action and SE standards. When the
upcoming standard “Software Engineering - Lifecycle Profiles for Very Small Enter-
prises (VSE)” [7] will be available, we will consider how this standard fits in this
proposition.
