DISCOVERING WORK-ITEM RELATIONS THROUGH FULL TEXT AND STANDARD METHOD ANALYSIS

• US 20130212582A1
• Filed: 02/10/2012
• Published: 08/15/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 02/10/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Mazzoleni, Pietro, Mukherjee, Debdoot
• Granted Patent: US 9,612,830 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 718/100
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/20 Software design
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/70 Software maintenance or management
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/74 Reverse engineering; Extracting design information from source code
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/75 Structural analysis for program understanding
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/0633 Workflow analysis

Abstract

Discovering work-item relations, in one aspect, may include identifying mappings of work-item elements to standardized specification elements, for instance, by analyzing a plurality of work-item elements and their relationships generated from a description of a collection of work-items, and a plurality of standardized specification elements and their relationships generated from a description of practice guidelines for completing the project. One or more missing relations may be discovered among the plurality of work-item elements based on the mappings.

Claims

1. A method of discovering work-item relations, comprising:

analyzing a description of a collection of work-items created in one or more projects, to generate a plurality of work-item elements and their relationships;

analyzing one or more standardized specifications describing practices to follow in executing said one or more projects, to generate a plurality of standardized specification elements and their relationships;

mapping, by a processor, said plurality of work-item elements to said plurality of standardized specification elements; and

discovering, by the processor, one or more missing relations or work-item elements, or combinations thereof, among said plurality of work-item elements based on said mapping.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein said step of discovering includes:

selecting a collection of standardized specification elements that are related and discovering a pair of work-item elements that are mapped to said selected collection of standardized specification elements, and if said pair of work-item elements does not have a relationship, linking said pair of work-item elements.

3. The method of claim 2, further including:

repeating the step of selecting until all work-item elements have links corresponding to the mapped standardized specification elements.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein said mapped plurality of work-item elements and said plurality of standardized specification elements are refined further manually.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein said step of mapping includes performing string similarity algorithm, Boolean similarity algorithm, or relational similarity algorithm or combinations thereof to identify mappings of said plurality of work-item elements and said plurality of standardized specification elements.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein said collection of work-items are created in a work-item-based software used to track activities executed in said one or more projects.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein each of the work-item indicates a single unit of work needed to be completed in a context of said one or more projects.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein said work-items include design documents, issues, risks, test cases, and bugs.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the work-items include functional specification, technical specification, reports, interfaces, process definition, strategy, and organizational change.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the step of analyzing one or more standardized specifications include identifying work phase, work-item input, work-item output, role, type, guidance, title, and suggested project work breakdown structure.

11. The method of claim 10, wherein the suggested project work breakdown structure is automatically created in work-item-based software and changed overtime by one or more users.

12. The method of claim 1, further including refining said standardized specification based on the step of analyzing steps.

13. The method of claim 1, wherein the collection of work-items are associated with two or more projects that have been merged.

14. A method of discovering work-item relations, comprising:

identifying, by a processor, mappings of work-item elements to standardized specification elements, by analyzing a plurality of work-item elements and their relationships generated from a description of a collection of work-items, each of the work-items indicating a single unit of work needed to complete a project, and a plurality of standardized specification elements and their relationships generated from a description of practice guidelines for completing the project; and

discovering, by the processor, one or more missing relations among said plurality of work-item elements based on said mappings.

15. The method of claim 14, wherein said step of discovering includes:

selecting a collection of standardized specification elements that are related and discovering a pair of work-item elements that are mapped to said selected collection of standardized specification elements, and if said pair of work-item elements does not have a relationship, linking said pair of work-item elements.

16. The method of claim 15, further including:

repeating the step of selecting until all work-item elements have links corresponding to the mapped standardized specification elements.

17. A system for discovering work-item relations, comprising:

a processor; and

a link discovery module operable to execute on the processor, and further operable to identify mappings of work-item elements to standardized specification elements, by analyzing a plurality of work-item elements and their relationships generated from a description of a collection of work-items, each of the work-items indicating a single unit of work needed to complete a project, and a plurality of standardized specification elements and their relationships generated from a description of practice guidelines for completing the project,

the link discovery module further operable to discover one or more missing relations among said plurality of work-item elements based on said mappings.

18. The system of claim 17, wherein the collection of work-items is updated to include the discovered one or more missing relations.

19. The system of claim 17, further including:

a method parser operable to parse said description of practice guidelines and generate said plurality of standardized specification elements and their relationships; and

a work-item parser operable to parse said description of a collection of work-items and generate said plurality of work-item elements and their relationships.

20. A computer readable storage medium storing a program of instructions executable by a machine to perform a method of discovering work-item relations, comprising:

identifying, by a processor, mappings of work-item elements to standardized specification elements, by analyzing a plurality of work-item elements and their relationships generated from a description of a collection of work-items, each of the work-items indicating a single unit of work needed to complete a project, and a plurality of standardized specification elements and their relationships generated from a description of practice guidelines for completing the project; and

discovering, by the processor, one or more missing relations among said plurality of work-item elements based on said mappings.

21. The computer readable storage medium of claim 20, wherein said step of discovering includes:

selecting a collection of standardized specification elements that are related and discovering a pair of work-item elements that are mapped to said selected collection of standardized specification elements, and if said pair of work-item elements do not have a relationship, linking said pair of work-item elements.

22. The computer readable storage medium of claim 21, further including:

repeating the step of selecting until all work-item elements have links corresponding to the mapped standardized specification elements.

23. The computer readable storage medium of claim 22, wherein said mapping of the plurality of work-item elements and the plurality of standardized specification elements are refined further manually.

24. The computer readable storage medium of claim 22, wherein said collection of work-items are created in a work-item-based software used to track activities executed in said one or more projects.

25. The computer readable storage medium of claim 22, wherein the description of practice guidelines for completing the project includes work phases, work-item input, work-item output, role, type, guidance, title, and suggested project work breakdown structure.