This vocabulary is defined in some detail in "activity theory", and
it might be good to borrow their definitions.
I like "activity" personally. I agree with your sentiments on
"process".
In activity theory, I think the difference between "activity" and
"action" is that activities are higher-level, being composed of many
actions. Correct me if I'm wrong.
On Oct 19, 2005, at 9:51 AM, Sebastian Jekutsch wrote:
Dear PPIG'ler,
there's a growing interest in the software engineering research
community what we currently term "micro-process of software
engineering". It's about studying and observing what a programmer/
developer is actually doing to develop software: changing code,
compiling, running test cases, making pauses, discussing with
colleagues, etc, etc. The research is on discoving typical patterns
of work and evaluating these in terms of quality considerations or
compliance with process models. (In the next PPIG newsletter I will
introduce this in a bit more detail.)
Meanwhile, we are not happy with the term "micro-process" anymore
because "process" in software engineering usually means a *planned*
procedure. Additionally, "micro-process" is already being used in a
different manner elsewhere.
I wonder whether the "doing" should better be termed as
* software development behavior (=> behavior patterns)
or
* software development activities (=> activity patterns)
What's the difference between "behavior" and "activity"? And what
about "action"; are programmers performing "actions" while coding,
comprehending, or testing? Automated processes (for example nightly
builds) are also "developing" software: Do machines "behave"? What
would you prefer? Is there any accepted term for this concept?
Any suggestion is welcome.
Sebastian
--
Software Engineering Working Group
Institut für Informatik
Freie Universitaet Berlin
Takustr. 9, 14195 Berlin, Germany
+49 30 838 75239
http://www.inf.fu-berlin.de/~jekutsch
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