D2.1 ORM architecture and engineering models

Software-developing SMEs are progressively more and more under pressure to adopt a process-oriented approach in their daily activities. This new requirement may have different causes: It is required in order to achieve a certain certification; or it is part of an initiative to improve the organisation in some way. The activity of defining the processes of an organisation, especially the production processes, can benefit from the use of pre-existing knowledge in the domain. Of course, all this pre-existing knowledge must be used wisely taking into account the context and the needs of the organisation and of the specific kind of IT product. For example, a mission critical product (a product influencing the possibility to realize the business of the client) might require more intensive veri fication and prototype evaluation than other systems. The FACIT-SME project is developing a novel Open Reference Model (ORM) focused on the needs of IT SMEs and their environment in order to facilitate their adoption of good practices. This reference model is mapped to relevant standards such as CMMI, ISO 15504, and ITMark to support SMEs in the certification processes. The target is to enable the easy instantiation of these reference models in order to support individual software development projects. The ORM stores existing reference knowledge for software-developing SMEs. As backbone the reference knowledge reflects SME-applicable best practices (including Process Improvement Models, processes, procedures, and so on) for e.g. software specification and implementation, order and pro ject management processes and quality assurance and management processes. The processes and procedures are providing the glue between necessary enterprise elements describing supporting tools (e.g. suitable requirements management tools), roles and competences, documents and methods (e.g. agile methods like SCRUM) which are stored into the integrated reference model as well. The reference model will ensure three innovative aspects for IT SME: 1. Consistency between these enterprise elements; 2. Integration of related quality management standards around Software Engineering (IT Mark, CMMI, SPICE; additional candidates are ITIL/CMMI-SVC for Services); 3. A deployment model consisting of three elements: innovation culture assessment, innovation establishment and monitoring supporting th e methodology implementation inside the SME. This deliverable focuses on the elaboration of the architecture, meta-model and initial knowledge content of the Open Reference Model (ORM). It illustrates the initial work on the scoping and structuring of the ORM, targeting small and medium size enterprises. The architecture (including modelling methodology) and the content of the ORM are defined. It contains the engineering methodologies and tools as well as the supporting quality management methodologies. The next two chapters start with an ORM overview covering the embedding of the ORM in the FACIT-SME solution concept and the principle ORM architecture components. It illustrates the work done in the project to define the scope of the ORM and to ground the work in realistic needs of ITS MEs. It covers an analysis of requirements for FACIT-SME and the ORM. The storage of information within the ORM requires an information model which is represented in the Meta-model of the ORM (chapter 6). It covers different but interrelated packages to store methodologies, quality models, process knowledge, tools and deployment concepts. It is followed by chapters providing related content such as a survey on tools, software engineering models and related process models as well as quality models. This covers initial knowledge which will be provided by the ORM. However, it has been also use to develop the meta-model as well as the modelling requirements.