Process Smell 2.0: A catalogue of Bad Smells for software process using BPMN.
Bad Smells, Process Smel, Software Process
An explicitly specified software process improves the quality of the generated product.
The specification directs the path and steps to be followed so that the developed software
reaches the quality desired by the project. The software process evolves along with the
needs of the organization and the professionals who use it. It needs to be continuously
monitored and evaluated to maintain its quality. To evaluate a software process, simula-
tions or data obtained after execution are commonly used. However, in both cases, it is
difficult to predict problems in the software process in a given development project before
one or more executions. Therefore, Process Smells were proposed to enable problems in
the design of software processes to be identified before they were executed. The presence
of a Process Smell can negatively impact the quality of the Process, thus affecting the
quality of the software product. Initially, Process Smells were specified using the Soft-
ware Process Specification Metamodel (SPEM) notation. Although SPEM is a language
for the domain of process modeling, Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) has
been widely used for processes in general, with high popularity both in the market and
academia. In this sense, the specification of a new catalog can allow Process smells to
be understood independently of the language domain. Still, in the context of process im-
provement, just like SPEM, although BPMN is used to improve the understanding of a
process, the specification of a process can be done inappropriately, injuring the necessary
factors for the quality of a process of software. In this context, this research aimed to
specify a Process Smells catalog to support the identification of anomalies in software
processes specified with BPMN based on the (SANTOS; MACIEL; SANT’ANNA, 2018)
proposal. Initially, Process Smells were specified in BPMN, thus originating a new ca-
talog with 8 Process Smells, Process Smells 2.0. Thirty-two professionals evaluated the
specification through an interview study, which indicated that these professionals accep-
ted the proposed new Process Smells catalog. The results obtained in this study made it
possible to verify that the proposal to identify smells regardless of the language domain
makes sense. The second stage of the study proved to be more concurrent with SPEM.
The catalog specification is expected to support the identification of Process Smells in
software processes modeled using BPMN to indicate the points where the Process can be
improved, even before its first execution, avoiding problems that negatively affect process
quality attributes. Additionally, the new catalog is expected to expand the possibility of
using Process Smells.