Eliciting formal models of software engineering processes

One of the first steps in improving a process is to understand the process, for example, by building descriptive models of the process. This paper addresses the elicitation of formal process models from real-world projects, using the Elicit method and tool, developed at McGill, and Statemate. In addition, the paper illustrates how formal models can make processes visible and how they can uncover inconsistencies and incompleteness in the understanding and the documentation. The described method and tools have been used in several real-world software projects, and the paper describes some conclusions drawn from this experience. Example process models are shown, and a tool demonstration is included in the CD-ROM that is part of this publication.