Process modeling across the web information infrastructure

Abstract

Abstract Web‐based open source software development (OSSD) project communities provide interesting and unique opportunities for software process modeling and simulation. While most studies focus on analyzing processes in a single organization, we focus on modeling software development processes both within and across three distinct but related OSSD project communities: Mozilla, a Web artifact consumer; the Apache HTTP server that handles the transactions of Web artifacts to consumers such as the Mozilla browser; and NetBeans, a Java‐based integrated development environment (IDE) for creating Web artifacts and application systems. In this article, we look at the process relationships within and between these communities as components of a Web information infrastructure. We employ expressive and comparative techniques for modeling such processes that facilitate and enhance understanding of the software development techniques utilized by their respective communities and the collective infrastructure in creating them. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.