In 1997, the E3 system was four years old. It has been implemented twice and the last prototype was java based. E3 is java based and still working. But the E3 project died in 1997 when I moved from Torino to Trondheim.
Why did I decide to stop a project, whose results had been published on ACM Transaction on Software Engineering and Methodology? Why did I at the age of 32, give up a project, about which I could have supervised new students? In 1997, I took a lot of decisions. I get married, I get pregnant, I sold the apartment which I had bought renewed in Turin. I left my best friends and a researcher job in Turin. The reason why I did all these choices is a long story, which it would be too long and too simple to explain here.
What is relevant here is that the main reason why I decided to quit E3, was because it belonged to my old life in Turin, and I was not wise enough to understand that E3 and the knowledge I had about process modelling would have supported me. E3 would have been a good old friend, to share with my Norwegian students. I should have let E3 grow and develop.
To tell the truth, I did not "kill" my baby E3 overnight. When I came to Norway, I tried to propose a couple of master theses about E3, but I did not get any students. In 1993, I was invited to teach about E3 at a winter school in Grenoble and I left my 10 months old son, to travel from Norway to France and to teach about process modelling and E3. Each time I talk, or write about software process modelling, I have this feeling that I am talking about something I know and that belongs to me. However, I gave up E3.
The last time I have been talking about E3 at a conference was in 2001, September 2001. I had run a simple experiment in the context of a course, which has been the first software engineering experiment I ever run.
I have never felt home at my Department in Trondheim. When I came, some colleagues started to tell me that I should not work on process issues, but rather on software product issues. Instead of admiring my work in software process modelling, some colleagues of mine pushed me to start working in the software architecture field, as there was that need at the department both on the research and the teaching side.
Now I believe that what I thought was that after changing country, apartment, friends, language, and everything, I could easily change the topic of my research and teaching. But it was not the case.
I am still recognized in Europe for my software process modelling work. Changing to a new big topic as software architecture was not a good idea.