Discovering work-item relations through full text and standard method analysis

• US 9,612,830 B2
• Filed: 02/10/2012
• Issued: 04/04/2017
• 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
• Primary Examiner(s): Bullock, Jr., Lewis A
• Assistant Examiner(s): DASCOMB, JACOB D
• Application Number:
  US13/370,936
• Publication Number:
  US 20130212582A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,880 Days
• 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, automatically by a processor, 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, automatically by the processor, one or more standardized specifications describing practice guidelines to follow in executing said one or more projects and deliverables expected to be generated, to generate a plurality of standardized specification elements and their relationships represented as nodes and edges, the one or more standardized specifications specified in a text form and comprising a title of a task involved in the one or more projects, a relationship the task in the one or more projects has with another task in the one or more projects, description of the task, the one or more standardized specification further comprising a work-breakdown tree with different tasks comprising at least the task;

mapping, automatically by the processor, said plurality of work-item elements to said plurality of standardized specification elements,

the mapping comprising identifying a threshold similarity between a single work-item element node and a standardized specification element, and between a pair of work-item element nodes with associated link relationship and a pair of standardized specification elements with associated link relationship, wherein the single work-item element node is mapped at most to one standardized specification element, the identifying the threshold similarity comprising one or more of string similarity, Boolean similarity and relational similarity;

discovering, automatically by the processor, at least one or more missing relations among said plurality of work-item elements based on said mapping,

wherein the relationships comprise at least one or more of changed by, has same owner as, input from and output to;

receiving, based on at least on one of a determination that the mapping creates a conflict and the mapping has a low confidence, input from a user to resolve the at least one of the conflict in the mapping and the low confidence in the mapping; and

adding, automatically by the processor, the discovered one or more missing relations as edges to the 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 collection of work-items are created in a work-item-based software used to track activities executed in said one or more projects.

5. 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.

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

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

8. 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.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein the suggested project work breakdown structure is automatically created in work-item-based software and changed overtime by one or more users.

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

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

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

identifying, automatically by a processor, mappings of work-item elements to standardized specification elements, by automatically 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 represented as nodes and edges generated from a description of practice guidelines for completing the project, the practice guidelines specified in a text form and comprising a title of a task involved in the one or more projects, a relationship the task in the one or more projects has with another task in the one or more projects, description of the task, the one or more standardized specification further comprising a work-breakdown tree with different tasks comprising at least the task,

wherein the identifying of the mappings comprises identifying a threshold similarity between a single work-item element node and a standardized specification element, and between a pair of work-item element nodes with associated link relationship and a pair of standardized specification elements with associated link relationship, wherein the single work-item element node is mapped at most to one standardized specification element, the identifying the threshold similarity comprising one or more of string similarity, Boolean similarity and relational similarity;

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

wherein the relationships comprise at least one or more of changed by, has same owner as, input from and output to;

receiving, based on at least on one of a determination that the mapping creates a conflict and the mapping has a low confidence, input from a user to resolve the at least one of the conflict in the mapping and the low confidence in the mapping; and

automatically adding the discovered one or more missing relations as edges to the mapping.

13. The method of claim 12, 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.

14. The method of claim 13, further including:

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

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

a processor; and

a link discovery module operable to;

execute on the processor;

automatically identify mappings of work-item elements to standardized specification elements, by automatically 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 represented as nodes and edges generated from a description of practice guidelines for completing the project, the practice guidelines specified in a text form and comprising a title of a task involved in the one or more projects, a relationship the task in the one or more projects has with another task in the one or more projects, description of the task, the one or more standardized specification further comprising a work-breakdown tree with different tasks comprising at least the task,

wherein the mappings are identified by determining a threshold similarity between a single work-item element node and a standardized specification element, and between a pair of work-item element nodes with associated link relationship and a pair of standardized specification elements with associated link relationship, wherein the single work-item element node is mapped at most to one standardized specification element, the identifying the threshold similarity comprising one or more of string similarity, Boolean similarity and relational similarity;

automatically discover one or more missing relations among said plurality of work-item elements based on said mappings,

wherein the relationships comprise at least one or more of changed by, has same owner as, input from and output to;

receive, based on at least on one of a determination that the mapping creates a conflict and the mapping has a low confidence, input from a user to resolve the at least one of the conflict in the mapping and the low confidence in the mapping; and

automatically add the discovered one or more missing relations as edges to the mapping.

16. The system of claim 15, 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.

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

identifying, automatically by a processor, mappings of work-item elements to standardized specification elements, by automatically 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 represented as nodes and edges generated from a description of practice guidelines for completing the project, the practice guidelines specified in a text form and comprising a title of a task involved in the one or more projects, a relationship the task in the one or more projects has with another task in the one or more projects, description of the task, the one or more standardized specification further comprising a work-breakdown tree with different tasks comprising at least the task,

wherein the identifying of the mappings comprises identifying a threshold similarity between a single work-item element node and a standardized specification element, and between a pair of work-item element nodes with associated link relationship and a pair of standardized specification elements with associated link relationship, wherein the single work-item element node is mapped at most to one standardized specification element, the identifying the threshold similarity comprising one or more of string similarity, Boolean similarity and relational similarity;

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

wherein the relationships comprise at least one or more of changed by, has same owner as, input from and output to;

receiving, based on at least on one of a determination that the mapping creates a conflict and the mapping has a low confidence, input from a user to resolve the at least one of the conflict in the mapping and the low confidence in the mapping; and

automatically adding the discovered one or more missing relations as edges to the mapping.

18. The computer readable storage medium of claim 17, 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.

19. The computer readable storage medium of claim 18, further including:

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

20. The computer readable storage medium of claim 19, 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.

21. The computer readable storage medium of claim 19, 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.