Software Development Standard and Software Engineering Practice: A Case Study of Bangladesh

Improving software process to achieve high quality in a software development organization is the key factor to success. Bangladeshi software firms have not experienced much in this particular area in comparison to other countries. The ISO 9001 and CMM standard has become a basic part of software development. The main objectives of our study are: 1) To understand the software development process uses by the software developer firms in Bangladesh 2) To identify the development practices based on established quality standard and 3) To establish a standardized and coherent process for the development of software for a specific project. It is revealed from this research that software industries of Bangladesh are lacking in target set for software process and improvement, involvement of quality control activities, and standardize business expertise practice. This paper investigates the Bangladeshi software industry in the light of the above challenges.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figures, 11 table

An evaluation of the RAPID assessment-based process improvement method for small firms

[Abstract]: With increasing interest by the software development community in software process improvement (SPI), it is vital that SPI programs are evaluated and the reports of lessons learned disseminated. This paper presents an evaluation of a program in which low-rigour, one-day SPI assessments were offered at no cost to 22 small Australian software development firms. The assessment model was based on ISO/IEC 15504 (SPICE). About twelve months after the assessment, the firms were contacted to arrange a follow-up meeting to determine the extent to which they had implemented the recommendations from the assessment. Comparison of the process capability levels at the time of assessment and the follow-up meetings revealed that the process improvement program was effective in improving the process capability of many of these small software development firms. Analysis of the assessment and follow-up reports explored important issues relating to SPI: elapsed time from assessment to follow-up meeting, the need for mentoring, the readiness of firms for SPI, the role of the owner/manager, the advice provided by the assessors, and the need to record costs and benefits. Based on a meta-analysis of the program and its outcomes, advice and recommendations are provided to small firms and assessors. As well as providing validation of the assessment model and method, the outcomes from this research have the potential to better equip practitioners and consultants to undertake software process improvement, hence increasing the success of small software development firms in domestic and global markets

Customer Agility Capabilities at EuroBank: The Role of ICT and Organizational Routines

Knowledge management (KM) plays a prominent role in IT and software development companies. It is often introduced as part of larger organizational change processes that aim at improving their software development processes. Process improvement in the IT sector has led to the establishment of the software process improvement (SPI) discipline. We present the conceptual basis for investigating how software companies can ground their improvement activities on knowledge management through a study of the KM and SPI literature. We identify two archetypes of knowledge organizations which we label exemplary and situational and two approaches to process improvement, which we call normative and reflective. Our analysis of the relationship between KM and SPI leads to a proposal for a balanced theory of KM in SPI and provides valuable insights into how meaningful KM can be conducted for process improvements in IT and software organizations

Towards Successful Software Process Improvement Initiatives: Experiences from the Battlefield

Over the past years Brazil has done significant investments in software process improvement. Among them, the long term MPS.BR program focuses on improving the software process quality of Brazilian companies. This paper describes the successful software process improvement (SPI) initiative that is being developed in Brazil, called the MPS.BR program, including its software process improvement reference model (MR-MPS-SW) and the most important results accomplished to date. Our results include the analysis of the iMPS family of surveys, and lessons learned that are valuable to the SPI community. The results and benefits presented can be useful to researchers, practitioners and decision makers in Government, University, and Industry interested in SPI and software industry competitiveness. Moreover, the benefits presented can motivate organizations to engage on MPS model SPI initiatives as a mean to improve the quality of their software

Best software test & quality assurance practices in the project life-cycle. An approach to the creation of a process for improved test & quality assurance practices in the project life-cycle of an SME

The cost of software problems or errors is a significant problem to global industry, not only to the producers of the software but also to their customers and end users of the software. There is a cost associated with the lack of quality of software to companies who purchase a software product and also to the companies who produce the same piece of software. The task of improving quality on a limited cost base is a difficult one. The foundation of this thesis lies with the difficult task of evaluating software from its inception through its development until its testing and subsequent release. The focus of this thesis is on the improvement of the testing & quality assurance task in an Irish SME company with software quality problems but with a limited budget. Testing practices and quality assurance methods are outlined in the thesis explaining what was used during the software quality improvement process in the company. Projects conducted in the company are used for the research in the thesis. Following the quality improvement process in the company a framework for improving software quality was produced and subsequently used and evaluated in another company

The Pro-t-con project : the development of a system for continuous process improvement using Pro-t-con process optimisation software at AEP Filmpac Ltd : a thesis submitted to the Faculty of Technology and Engineering, Massey University, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Technology in Quality Systems

Appendix M removed due to copyright restrictions. Consult print copy held in the LibraryThis project details the work done to develop a methodology for process improvement at AEP Filmpac in Auckland, New Zealand. The company had purchased a process optimisation software package called Pro-t-con which they intended to use to improve the operating conditions for each product on each machine in the plant. Early use of the Pro-t-con software produced a number of questions as to its ability to optimise processes as effectively as expected. Thus research was done to test the effectiveness of the package and analyse its strengths and weaknesses. The results of this work suggest that Pro-t-con although very easy to use is limited in its ability to effectively optimise processes. Statistically it lacks the rigor of Classical and Taguchi design of experiment methods and cannot resolve processes with interactions or non-linear factors. At the outset of the project the plant did not possess a system for suitably storing and retrieving machine setup information, thus any improvements made to the settings one day would not be available for use the next time that product was run. Consequently in order to longitudinally develop process settings it was also necessary to develop a setting sheet system to support the process improvement initiatives. The combination of a methodology for continuously improving processes and one for actually undertaking experiments to exploit such a process produced a coherent 10 step method for general process improvement This method was used successfully on a variety of processes at plants in Auckland and Sydney

Software process representation to support multiple views

Current interest in improving the effectiveness and predictability of software development has led to a recent focus on software process modeling and improvement. Process-centered software development environments (PCSDEs), have been examined as a useful adjunct to software process modeling. A number of PCSDEs have been designed and built; an examination of the range of potential users of such environments reveals a wide range of needs with respect to information about an enacted software process and how this information is presented. The paper describes one aspect of a PCSDE supporting multiple simultaneous views: the design of a representation of enacted software processes which is suitable for the generation of multiple simultaneous views