Conformity and Integration of Software Processes

In this paper we present a systematic approach for the determination of process conformity and the integration of process models. Similar to CMM which defines consecutive levels of process maturity, we propose a five-level model measuring the conformity of process models. The approach is of practical importance for a number of applications, e.g. when a company’s process model has to be checked for conformity with a generic process model required in some project, or when two companies, each working with its own process model, intend to cooperate. We illustrate our approach with examples from an integration of the component based Catalysis method with the German standard process, the V-Model.