Utilization of a systemic business process re-engineering method as a tool to improve software process qualify

This paper suggests that a 'software process' can be viewed as an instance of a 'business process'. Therefore software process improvement might be achieved by applying the concepts of Business Process Re-engineering (BPR). BPR is introduced and the recent work of Jacobson, using object-oriented concepts to construct a BPR framework, is described. The paper critiques Jacobson's approach as being essentially reductionist, and presents an alternative approach, State-Behaviour Modelling (SBM), that utilizes systems principles in the analysis of problem situations, while generating object models. The application of SBM to model and improve a component of a software development process, is presented.