The MINI software factory: Development of kernel mechanisms around process modeling and software bus techniques

The global evolution of software development leads to large projects involving many people. Organizing these people is a big challenge for software engineering. The ESF (Eureka Software Factory) program, funded by a number of European countries, relies on the idea of a software factory for improving the productivity and the quality of software development. The MINI is a software factory prototype. Based on the principles and the architecture defined by the ESF project, the MINI factory intends to demonstrate the cooperation of users involved in the management, production, and support of software development. Built from a set of heterogeneous and dissimilar components or tools, the MINI factory provides an integrated and coherent environment available for each actor of the software production. The MINI factory allows us to look at the users' daily activities within the context of a software factory, as well as at the integration mechanisms used to build such an environment.