1 An exercise in modeling a real software process M. Baldi ♣ and M.L. Jaccheri Dipartimento di Automatica e Informatica Politecnico di Torino Aica 1995, sezione nazionale, lavoro completo, ingegneria del software Abstract This paper presents an experiment done with modeling the process manual of a real organization with a process modeling language, the E 3 PML, with the support of a drawing tool, called E 3 p-draw. The resulting process model template consists of 161 user defined classes and 585 associations. These classes and associations are being reused for subsequent similar experiments. 1. Introduction The E 3 specification method offers a process modeling language (PML) [BJ94] and an associated graphic tool, called E 3 p-draw [E395] ♥ . E 3 p-draw supports template creation and reuse. In E 3 , a process template is an abstraction for a class of process models, whereas a process model is a description of a software process. We observe that in the real production world, there exist process models, or plans, often represented as activity networks or bar charts and process manuals, often in textual form, sometimes augmented with pictures. In E 3 , the concept of process template has been introduced as there was the necessity to provide description of process manuals. To validate the E 3 method, we have specified, designed, and implemented the template of an existing organization. The input for our work is a manual of 175 pages of text and pictures that describes the process template of the FIAT/Iveco 1 . The aim of the manual is the classical one of describing the software process for understanding, improving, and guidance. The Iveco process template resembles a classical Waterfall model, with much emphasis to verification and validation starting from the first phases. The manual contains both inconsistencies and errors, some of which were yet discovered during a deep study phase. Some others were found only when the process model template was specified with the E 3 method. The PML is based on object orientation augmented with formal association management. The E 3 PML resembles object oriented notations, e.g., Rumbaugh [Rum91]. The differences are that E 3 PML is customized for the process modeling domain and associations are managed in a formal way. The structure of this paper is as follows: section 2 summarizes the main features of the E 3 PML and the associated tool E 3 p-draw. Section 3 describes the Iveco process manual, as it was before it was specified by the E 3 method. Section 4 gives the E 3 template specification. Some conclusions are given in section 5. 2. The E 3 PML and associated tool E 3 p-draw Here, a short summary of the E 3 PML and associated support tool is given. Examples will be given in next sections. The E 3 PML enables class and association creation and definition. In the following, we will always refer to classes and associations and not to their instances. This is because the goal of our work is to provide descriptions of process manuals by means of process model templates. For more detailed explanations, refer to [E395]. ♣ Address: Corso Duca degli Abruzzi 24, 10129 Torino. e-mail: baldi@vulcano.polito.it, tel: 011-5647067, fax: 011-5647099. ♥ E 3 : Environment for Experimenting and Evolving software processes.