Future Enhancements

Need For Enhancements

The OPF Website and Repository needs to be enhanced for the following reasons:

• Ease of Use.
  It should be much easier for users to use the repository to create endeavor-specific processes and organization-specific process repositories. To create a endeavor-specific process, currently a process engineer must manually:
  • Obtain a copy of the entire website.
  • Select the relevant process components without any tool support to suggest appropriate components given the characteristics of the endeavor.
  • Create a new endeavor-specific website containing only the selected process components without any tool support to obtain and integrate the selected components.
  • Tailor the HTML of the selected process components without tool support to:
    • Remove all mention of non-selected process components (i.e., broken links to non-selected webpages).
    • Add, remove, modify other content.
  • Extend the selected process components with additional endeavor or organization specific process components missing from the original repository.
  • Change the digital branding of the resulting website to match the local organization.
  • Test the resulting endeavor-specific process website.
  Meeting this need for enhancement will require:
  • Transitioning the repository from HTML through XHTML to XML, XSL, and DTDs.
  • Developing a set of integrated tools, tentatively planned to be written in Java, that will manipulate the XML files and largely automate the above tasks.
• Ease of Maintenance.
  It should be much easier to maintain the repository of reusable process components. Currently, the maintainers of the OPF Repository and process engineers of methods developed using the OPF Website must manually modify the HTML webpages documenting the process components. Once the OPF process components are transitioned from HTML to XML, we will need tools to support this maintenance.
• Quality:
  The quality of the reusable process components should be improved:
  • We need to continually improve the content of the webpages.
  • We need to improve the consistency of the process components so that all process components of the same metatype have the same format and type of content (e.g., developing DTDs for each metatype once the repository is transitioned from HTML to XML).
• Productization.
  While remaining free and open source, the website should evolve from a simple repository to a professional-quality product.
• Usage.
  The number of projects using OPF should be greatly increased. This will involve:
  • Increased work to ensure that the OPF Repository components rate higher on search engines.
  • Improved tool support.
  • Increased publication of articles about the repository.
  • Additional books about the OPF and how to use it.
  • Increased use of the repository contents by consultants, trainers, and vendors.
• Volunteers.
  The number of volunteers and submissions should be greatly increased.
• Membership.
  Membership in the OPFRO should be increased to handle the necessary workload.

Planned Enhancements

The OPF Repository Organization is currently planning and seeking volunteer effort to support the following future enhancements to the OPF repository and websites:

• Underlying Technology.
  • XML and XSL.
    Move the webpage-unique content to XML and the common content and layout to XSL. Planned to be incrementally performed during the first half of 2006. This separation of content from presentation will support flexibility and tool support.
  • XML Database.
    Move the XML content into a database from its current directory of flat files.
• Completion.
  • Complete Existing Components.
    Complete existing ‘placeholder’ process components.
  • Additional Examples.
    Add more example work products.
  • Additional Conventions.
    Add more standards, procedures, templates, and guidelines for work products.
• Tool Support.
  As illustrated in the following figure, the OPF Repository Organization is currently planning to produce an integrated process engineering environment (IPEE) for the:
  • OPFRO Methodologists, who will maintain the official OPFRO repository.
  • Process Engineers, who will maintain organizational OPF Repositories.
  • Users, who will use the IPEE to browse the repositories.

The OPFRO IPEE will include the following tools:

• Component Browser.
  A tool for browsing and searching the repository of reusable process components.
• Component Editor.
  A tool for creating, modifying, and deleting reusable process components.
• Process Consultant.
  A tool for obtaining advice regarding the proper characteristics of an endeavor-specific process.
• Process Builder.
  A tool for building an endeavor-specific process from the repository’s reusable process components.
• Process Browser.
  A tool for browsing and searching the repository of reusable processes.
• Process Editor.
  A tool for tailoring reusable and endeavor-specific processes via the addition, modification, and deletion of their process components.
• Process Simulator.
  A tool for simulating the behavior of an enacted process.
• Consistency Checker.
  A tool for checking the consistency of a process in terms of:
  • Correct links and anchors (i.e., no dangling references or orphaned components).
  • Correct preconditions and post conditions.
• Security.
  A tool for ensuring proper access control in terms of stakeholder, process engineer, and methodologist identification, authentication, and authorization.
• Configuration Management (CM).
  A tool for supporting configuration identification and control of process components and processes.