Open Services for Software Process Compliance Engineering

The paper presents an update of the change of expectations and most recent new approaches regarding software processes and their improvement following the Software Process Improvement Hype Cycle introduced earlier by the author as an extension of the Gartner Hype Cycle idea. Software process assessment and improvement can itself be considered on the more abstract level as a quest for compliance with best practices. Etics and regulatory regimes explicitly addressing safety-critical systems mean however stringent compliance requirements beyond the commitment to improve process capability. New approaches are necessary for software engineers to fulfill the considerably growing expectations regarding quality under much slower changing development budget and deadline constraints. Open Services for Lifecycle Collaboration (OSLC) is the emerging initiative inspired by the web which is currently at the technology trigger stage along its hype cycle with the potential to have a determining impact on the future of Software Process Compliance Engineering.