Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

A Formalization of the ISO/IEC 15504: Enabling Automatic Inference of Capability Levels

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Software Process Improvement and Capability Determination (SPICE 2017)

Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 770))

Abstract

This paper presents a formalization that captures definitions of a number of concepts of ISO/IEC 15504 and relations among the concepts. The formalization is expressed in a formal language, OWL. The two main objectives for this formalization was to be consistent with the ISO/IEC 15504-5 process assessment model and to be effective, i.e., to allow for an automatic determination of a process capability level based upon data about the process attributes and ratings. The formalization is presented in a number of levels, from more general concepts to more specific. To assess the validity of the formalization, a number of test cases for the scenario of automatic determination of the capability levels were developed. A set of OWL reasoners were then used to derive the capability levels for the acquisition process group. While the test results were all positive, the real value of this formalization comes from the fact that it faithfully captured the main aspects of ISO/IEC 15504, a well established and accepted model for the assessment of processes capability levels, and that an inference engine was able to support the assessment of processes capability levels of an organization.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    http://protege.stanford.edu/.

References

  1. SPICE Project Organization, Software Process Assessment (SPICE). http://www.sqi.gu.edu.au/SPICE/

  2. ISO/IEC 15504-1:2004, Information technology - Process assessment – Concepts and Vocabulary, International Organization for Standardization and International Electrotechnical Commission Std. (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  3. ISO/IEC 15504-5:2012, Information technology - Process assessment – An exemplar Process Assessment Model, International Organization for Standardization and International Electrotechnical Commission Std. (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  4. W3C, OWL 2 Web Ontology Language Structural Specification and Functional-Style Syntax (Second Edition), World Wide Web Consortium Recommendation (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  5. W3C, OWL Web Ontology Language Semantics and Abstract Syntax, World Wide Web Consortium Recommendation (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Horridge, M.: A practical guide to building OWL ontologies using protégé 4 and CODE tools, technical report, The University Of Manchester (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Horrocks, I., Patel-Schneider, P., Boley, H., Tabet, S., Grosof, B., Dean, M.: SWRL: A Semantic Web Rule Language Combining OWL and RuleML. W3C. http://www.w3.org/Submission/SWRL/

  8. W3C, Semantic Web Activity, World Wide Web Consortium Recommendation (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Gruber, T.R.: A translation approach to portable ontology specifications. Knowl. Acquisition 5(2), 199–220 (1993). doi:10.1006/knac.1993.1008

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Bunge, M.: Treatise on Basic Philosophy: Ontology I: The Furniture of the World. Springer, Dodrecht (1977)

    Book  MATH  Google Scholar 

  11. Glimm, B., Horrocks, I., Motik, B., Stoilos, G., Wang, Z.: HermiT: an OWL 2 reasoner. J. Autom. Reasoning 53, 245–269 (2014)

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  12. Tsarkov, D., Horrocks, I.: FaCT++ Description logic reasoner: system description. In: Proceedings of the Third International Joint Conference, USA, pp. 292–297 (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Sirin, E., Parsia, B., Grau, B., Kalyanpur, A., Katz, Y.: Pellet: a practical owl-dl reasoner. In: Web Semantics: Science, Services and Agents on the WWWs, vol. 5, pp. 51–53 (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  14. Vaculin, R.: Process Mediation Framework for Semantic Web Services. Ph.D. thesis, Department of Theoretical Computer Science and Mathematical Logic, Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Charles University (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Lemaignan, S.: Grounding the Interaction: Knowledge Management for Interactive Robots. Ph.D. thesis, Universite de Toulouse (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  16. Areces, C.: Logic Engineering. The Case of Description and Hybrid Logics. Ph.D. thesis, Institute for Logic, Language and Computation, University of Amsterdam (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Baader, F., Horrocks, I., Sattler, U.: Description logics. Found. Artif. Intell. 3, 135–179 (2008)

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by national funds through Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) with reference UID/CEC/50021/2013.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. INESC-ID, Lisbon, Portugal

    Diogo Proença & José Borbinha

  2. Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal

    Diogo Proença & José Borbinha

Authors
  1. Diogo Proença
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. José Borbinha
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Diogo Proença .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of the Balearic Islands, Palma, Spain

    Antonia Mas

  2. University of the Balearic Islands, Palma, Baleares, Spain

    Antoni Mesquida

  3. Dublin University, Dublin, Ireland

    Rory V. O'Connor

  4. Software Quality Institute, Griffith University, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

    Terry Rout

  5. Impronova AB, Askim, Sweden

    Alec Dorling

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG

About this paper

Cite this paper

Proença, D., Borbinha, J. (2017). A Formalization of the ISO/IEC 15504: Enabling Automatic Inference of Capability Levels. In: Mas, A., Mesquida, A., O'Connor, R., Rout, T., Dorling, A. (eds) Software Process Improvement and Capability Determination. SPICE 2017. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 770. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67383-7_15

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67383-7_15

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-67382-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-67383-7

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation