Abstract

Software process modelling has recently become an area of interest within both academia and industry. It aims at defining and formalizing the software process in the form of formal rigorous models. A software process modelling formalism presents the language or notation in which the software process is defined and formalized. Several software process modelling formalisms have been introduced lately, however, they have failed to gain the attention of the industry. One major objective of formalizing the software process that has ever been an issue of research, is to enhance the understanding and communication among software process users. To achieve this aim, a modelling formalism has to offer a common language to be wellunderstood by all software process users. BPMN presents a graphical-based widely accepted standard formalism, mainly aimed at business process modelling. This paper illustrates a software process modelling formalism based upon BPMN specifications for representing the software process, named as, SP2MN. The paper also demonstrates the applicability and evaluation of the proposed formalism by; utilizing the standard ISPW-6 benchmark problem, in addition to comparing the expressiveness of SP2MN with similar software process modelling formalisms. The evaluations prove that SP2MN contributes in enhancing software process formalization. SP2MN, accordingly, can be used as a standard software process modelling formalism.