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The subject of this paper is the description of a process-centered software development environment called MERLIN which monitors and guides teams of software developers and managers in producing software objects. Software objects (or objects for short) include all sorts of documents like requirements analysis, design, code, user manuals, contracts etc. For each user, MERLIN automatically displays a specific working context which contains information like objects, their relations, their current development state, and corresponding tools. This information is filtered according to the (access) rights and duties a particular user has in a particular project, i.e. the working context depends on the user's role (e.g. programmer, designer, manager). Internally, the computation of the information to be contained in a working context, is based on a rulelike definition of a software process and a flexible interpretation mechanism to enact such a process definition. The main feature of the interpreter is an alternating use of backward and forward chaining for the interpretation of rules. In addition, our implementation enables a persistent storage and incremental update during runtime of all process information expressed in facts within the MERLIN knowledge base.

Ethics is an important issue for each company nowadays. Ethical standards should be formulated and applied in branding, operating policy, producing and so on. Ethics specifications and criteria not only are related to the organizational members’ values, working behaviors, and professional decision-making, but also involve the relationship management between branding and customers. Due to these reasons, enterprises cann’t focus on the direct benefit only. The ethic which might affect branding image and service quality is also the key point. Only when the ethical criteria are formulated as importance specifications in the new service development (NSD) process, the branding of enterprises can improve a service quality.

Hence, company has started to the establishment of an ethical NSD architecture during NSD developing processes. This paper presents the ethical issues in NSD from internal and external viewpoint of company through focus group interview, and constructs an ethical NSD architecture. The proposed ethical NSD architecture might be able to provide a better ethical guideline for NSD developers to help company build a longer-term evolution of their branding and services’ quality.