Process Diversity in Software Development

0 7 4 0 7 4 5 9 / 0 0 / $ 1 0 . 0 0 © 2 0 0 0 I E E E First of all, what is a process? Asking this might seem trivial, but by reading the many excellent submissions for this issue, we realized this question has a far from trivial answer. According to the Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, you can define a process as “a series of actions or operations conducing to an end.” This definition seems to fit peoples’ general ideas about process, but clearly, numerous differing definitions of process exist. Is process the way a company operates—from marketing to human resources, to actual development—or the way a developer produces design or code, or tests the software? Does the process refer to management, engineering, or both? Does process imply a lot of formalism and expanding effort for writing and reading documents, instead of product development? Some people would answer yes to these questions, others no. Maybe the correct anfocus