Linkage Analysis of Processes

This paper presents a methodology for the analysis of the linkage among the processes in an organization. The methodology has three main steps: model construction; connectivity analysis; and structure analysis. The model construction step generates a linkage matrix which is used in the following steps. The connectivity analysis is based on linkage consistency and interprocess coupling metrics, which are defined for each process individually and for all the processes in the organization as a group. The clustering algorithm is baaed on a linkage intensity measure derived from the linkage matrix, Following a detailed description of the methodology and its metrics and algorithms, the results obtained in a medium-size software development organization are presented.