Software engineering has come to recognize the value of effective development processes as vehicles for addressing such goals as improved efficiency in software development, the achievement of improved product quality, and better coordination and communication of the members of software teams. Greater clarity, completeness, and precision in defining these processes seem to lead to greater effectiveness in pursuing these goals.



We have explored the use of languages and notations that are strongly based upon traditional applications programming languages to support the precise definition of processes, and the analysis of such process definitions. Such languages show considerable promise, but more progress towards better languages and tools still seems indicated.



This talk suggests that processes are also central to the effective pursuit of essential goals in a broad spectrum of such other domains of human endeavor as medical services, e-government, dispute resolution, manufacturing, business, and even the conduct of scientific research itself. The talk summarizes research in the precise definition of processes in these other domains, using our Little-JIL process definition language as a vehicle for being specific about the processes we have defined and studied in these domains. This vehicle also forms the basis for observations that will be made about the language features, and tools, that seem important in supporting the definition and analysis of processes in all domains.



Professor Osterweil (University of Massachusetts) was invited to Swinburne under the Board of Research Visiting Professor Grant Scheme, and this lecture was presented as part of the PVC(R) Visiting Professor Lecture Series.