This Small Business Innovative Research Phase I project builds on a research program investigating the design of process-based software development tools and methodologies. The project will develop a next generation of this software that supports the creation, refinement, and adaptation of software development methodologies in a principled manner while preserving the need for rapid innovation. The BORE (Building an Organizational Repository of Experiences) software development approach uniquely provides two levels of process adaptation based on project experiences. The system allows individual development efforts to create an instance of a defined process and tailor it to meet project needs. This is accomplished through a rule-based system that formally captures project decisions in a manner that can easily be used to assess project experiences for potential process improvements. These experiences are used in a feedback-based framework that refines the defined process to meet the emerging needs of the organization. The objectives of this Phase I research project are to refine the concepts and implement them in a stable version of the BORE system that can be used in evaluative studies. These studies will be used to assess the feasibility of the overall approach for potential commercialization. The innovative approach investigated in this project has the right mix of flexibility and discipline not found in current methodologies or tools, which have had minimal impact on the industry thus far. Success of this project also has the potential for impact beyond software development organizations. It has already been used in educational settings and is general enough to be applied to a number of industries that face dynamic production and design processes in today's fast-based, customer driven, business milieu
