Abstract

The software process landscape is rich in complexity and many alternative software development approaches have emerged over the past 40 years. However, no single software development approach is universally implemented and it seems likely that no single approach can be universally useful. One of the primary reasons that no single approach is universally useful is that no two software development settings are identical. We have assembled a team of recognized academics, who together with industrial collaborators, plan to map the complex world of software processes with the context of software development projects. The results of our initial mapping efforts, reported in this paper, demonstrate that although there are challenges in an undertaking such as this, the outcomes are potentially of considerable value to both software researchers and practitioners.