Improving Reusability in Software Process Lines

Software processes orchestrate manual or automatic tasks to create new software products that meet the requirements of specific projects. While most of the tasks are about inventiveness, modern developments also require recurrent, boring and time-consuming tasks (e.g., the IDE configuration, or the continuous integration setup). Such tasks struggle to be automated due to their various execution contexts according to the requirements of specific projects. In this paper, we propose a methodology that benefits from an explicit modeling of a family of processes to identify the possible reuse of automated tasks in software processes. We illustrate our methodology on industrial projects in a software company. Our methodology promoted both the identification of possible automated tasks for configuring IDEs and continuous integration, and their reuse in various projects of the company. Our methodology contributes to the companies' efficiency, including their agility and ability to experiment new practices, while remaining focused on solving business problems.