The sdPP Project (Software Development Project Patterns) develops a model and a software tool called sdpReuser to support research in software development best practices.
The main goal of the project is to develop a tool to help software engineers undergo the effective practices defined by most well-known international institutions such as ISO, SEI, and Project Management Institute.
The sdPP Project is developed by the SEL-UC3M Group of the University Carlos III of Madrid, and it is funded by the Spanish Government through the grant "A platform to model, reuse and measure software process management (GPSTIN-2004-0783)".
The sdPP model is defined as a problem-solution pair. In the problem side we specify the types of software development projects the pattern is advised for, and in the solution side we define a set of information elements such as activities, workflows, productflows, best practices, etc. proposed by the software development methodologies, reference frameworks and best practices, all of which help solving the problem described in the sdPP. To organize the information in the sdPP we have designed a data model, see Figure 1.
In the problem definition side we have the following information elements: a textual description of the methodology, reference framework, best practices, etc.; a set of metadata for quantitative classification of the projects; a set of requirements we should be able to satisfy to apply the solution given in the pattern; and a set of risks we would assume if applying the solution.
In the solution side we have the following information elements: a WBS (Work Breakdown Structure) with a tree structure to organize the methodology activities; a workflow indicating the recommended sequence to perform the WBS activities; a productflow indicating how the products flow between activities; and a set of "to-does" with recommendations based on the best practices and lessons learned, though not modeled by the workflow.