Actionable light-weight process guidance

Software engineering organizations in safety-critical domains require rigorous processes that include explicit software quality assurance measures (QA) to achieve high-quality and safe engineering artifacts. One major challenge for engineers is adhering to the correct process that is applicable in their specific working context, to understand which steps are ready to start, what actions are missing to complete their step, and when rework has happened. In this paper, we propose and evaluate ProGuide, a framework that provides actionable, light-weight process guidance by continuously assessing pre-conditions, post-conditions, and QA constraints. In case of a violation, it provides concrete repair actions. Evaluation on a safety-critical open source system and engineers from our industry partner Bosch showed that repairs are complete and small in number, and resulted in less frustration and fewer mistakes compared to being provided with no process guidance. Editor's note: Open Science material was validated by the Journal of Systems and Software Open Science Board.