Project Description

The Teamware process support system is designed to improve team coordination and managerial control of software development teams. Teamware allows users to explicitly define their software development process and provides extensive execution support. In addition, Teamware is designed for non-technical as well as technical users, and is appropriate for use by managers, programmers, domain experts, and customer representatives. It also provides support for company-, site-, or project-specific customization.

During process execution, Teamware provides a summary of assignments for each team member. As each assignment is completed, Teamware informs appropriate managers and team members, and updates the shared project view. It also coordinates handoff of artifacts, tool interaction, and resource assignments. Further automation can be provided depending on the user's environment. This automation can include, for example, automatic invocation of tools, automated forwarding of documents to reviewers, or interaction with metrics gathering tools.

Summary of System Features

• Support for Non-Technical Personnel - The language and system are designed to support non-technical users as well as technical users. Non-technical managers, domain experts, accounting, marketing, and support staff are able to both read and write programs using the Teamware language.
• Company, Site, or Project Customizable - Companies or projects can customize Teamware to meet their specific needs. New activity, artifact, and resource types can be defined.
• Facilitates Integration with External Tools - Teamware's object model is designed to facilitate integration with any external tools providing an API. Teamware's agenda tool and default mail system, for example, can be replaced with the time-management and mail systems preferred by a particular site. In addition, meeting room schedulers, project management tools, and other site-specific tools can be integrated in using the object model.
• Object-Oriented - Teamware's activity, artifact, and resource definitions are object-oriented. Users can create new definitions which inherit the properties of existing definitions.
• Multiple-Viewing Formalisms Supportable - While Teamware provides a default view of the process similar to PERT charts, it also provides an API allowing access for viewing and editing using other viewers. Future viewers are planned including IDEF. In addition, users can define their own viewers.
• Dynamic Response to Project Changes - Teamware provides flexibility as the project changes. Teamware activities, activity networks, and activity, artifact, and resource types can be changed dynamically as the process executes.

Process Definition in Teamware

Teamware allows definition of the activities, artifacts, and resources associated with the software development process. These items can be defined hierarchically, thus an activity can be further subdivided into subactivities, while a software development team resource can be further defined to include team member resources or subteam resources. In addition, Teamware activity networks define the interelationships between activities, artifacts, and resources. Networks include definition of control flow, data flow, and resource assignments. Teamware's default activity network viewer provides a PERT-like view of the activities, however additional viewers can be defined using Teamware's API. An IDEF0 viewer, for example, is planned.

Teamware provides a high degree of extensibility and flexibility in process definitions. Teamware provides object-oriented hierarchies of activity, artifact, and resource categories. Users can customize or extend the existing categories to meet their specific needs. Thus, if a company uses a different e-mail system than mh (Teamware's default system), a new e-mail system can be easily integrated. Similarly, if a project needs a new resource type not found in Teamware, the existing resource hierarchy can be extended.