Cha-Q: Change-centric Quality Assurance

Work packages WP2, WP3 and WP4 concern the three major research themes of the Cha-Q Project. In WP2 (Analysing Changes), we will investigate a novel meta-model for representing changes, as well as a means to distill these changes. In WP3 (Repeating Change), we focus on devising a developer-friendly language and associated tool support for defining change-aware source-to-source transformations. Finally, we investigate novel ways to extract traceability links and maintain such link in WP4 (Tracing Changes). Within these work packages, we embrace an "in vitro" validation method: we validate the developed ideas and tools in controlled lab experiments using data obtained from open-source software systems.

WP1 and WP5 are orthogonal to WP2, WP3 and WP4 as they are explicitly intended to support the valorisation activies of this project.
In WP1, we investigate the state-of-the-art versus the state-of-the-praxis. By means of focused visits to the members of our industrial steering board, we catalogue their current development practices and identify specific challenges that these board members have to tackle. WP5 foresees the "in vivo" replication of the "in vitro" research results obtained in WP2, WP3 and WP4. We select a subset of our industrial use cases, and assess (using data and input provided by the members of the industrial steering board) the impact of change-centric techniques on these use cases. The output of this work package are a number of experience reports that then serve as a catalyst for future valorisation activities.