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

Organizational Change Perspectives on Software Process Improvement

Many software organizations have engaged in Software Process Improvement (SPI) and experienced the challenges related to managing such complex organizational change efforts. As a result, there is an increasing body of research investigating change management in SPI. To provide an overview of what we know and don’t know about SPI as organizational change, this paper addresses the following question: What are the dominant perspectives on SPI as organizational change in the literature and how is this knowledge presented and published? All journals on the AIS ranking list were screened to identify relevant articles and Gareth Morgan’s organizational metaphors (1996) were used to analyze this literature considering the following dimensions of each article: organizational perspective (metaphor), knowledge orientation (normative versus descriptive), theoretical emphasis (high versus low), main audience (practitioner versus academic), geographical origin (Scandinavia, the Americas, Europe, or the Asia-Pacific), and publication level (high versus low ranked journal). The review demonstrates that the literature on SPI as organizational change is firmly grounded in both theory and practice, and Scandinavia and the Americas are the main contributors to this research. The distribution of articles across Morgan’s metaphors is uneven and reveals knowledge gaps that present new avenues for research. The current literature offers important insights into organizational change in SPI from machine, organism, and brain perspectives. Practitioners may use these articles as a guide to SPI insights relevant to their improvement initiatives. In contrast, the impact of culture, dominance, psychic prison, flux and transformation, and politics in SPI have only received scant attention. We argue that these perspectives offer important insights into the challenges involved in managing change in SPI. Researchers are therefore advised to engage in new SPI research based on one or more of these perspectives. Overall, the paper provides a roadmap to help identify insights and specific articles related to SPI as organizational change.Software Process Improvement; Organizational Change; Organizational Metaphors; Images of Organization; Literature Review

Towards an Agile Approach to Software Process Improvement: Addressing the Changing Needs of Software Products

This paper highlights the need for greater agility and flexibility in the process improvement activity. The ideas presented here relate to aspects that have arisen from a case study of a global software product organisation. A model of how software process improvement can be agile in nature is proposed. This model is intended as indicative of the issues that need consideration by IS management. The model highlights the need to learn to improve through situated practice within an organisational framework that supports the needs of the business

The sociocultural dimension of the Software Process Improvement manifesto: pilot validation by experts

The SPI Manifesto is based on three basic values: people, business focus, and organizational change underpinning the philosophy of Software Process Improvement (SPI). In turn, these values bring up to date certain SPI principles serving as a foundation for action in software development. The authors of this paper carried out a pilot expert validation of the Sociocultural dimension of the STEEPLED (Sociocultural, Technical, Economic, Environmental, Political, Legal, Ethical and Demographic) analysis of the SPI Manifesto. Further, the authors report on the rationale and results of the pilot validation of both the survey instrument and the qualitative responses generated by the field experts, targeting to enlighten and reinforce the importance of the Sociocultural dimension of the SPI Manifesto in research and development. The related literature review findings and the pilot research study strengthen this target. The pilot study with experts in particular provided stronger indications that the Sociocultural dimension is considered of high importance by between 62% and 88% of the respondents, who were IT and Computing professionals and software practitioners from academia and industry

Learning to Improve Software Processes: Making Sense of Practice

Software Process Improvement (SPI) programs are frequently considered to be planned in nature. However, there is recent evidence to suggest that SPI can be understood as a form of learning. Drawing on the organizational learning literature, this paper proposes an active learning perspective of improvements in processes. This view recognizes the various actors in the project to be reflective in their actions, making sense of the current context and thus designing their use of the process to best suit their needs at the time. The changes in the processes emerge through ongoing adjustments, experimentation and improvisation as developers and managers seek to improve their product development

Towards reducing communication gaps in multicultural and global requirements elicitation

This paper focuses on the collaborative aspects of requirements elicitation, in the context of software, systems and service development. The aim is to identify and understand challenges of requirements elicitation in general and in distributed environments. We focus on human, social, and cultural factors that have an impact on communication in the requirements elicitation process. More specifically we aim to i) unfold potential cultural impediments that hamper the requirements elicitation process; ii) highlight cultural factors that should be taken into account in the requirements elicitation process in order to avoid incomplete and inconsistent requirements; and iii) make recommendations for alleviating the problems. In this paper our first step is to report on the findings of a review of the literature regarding culture in RE. The results suggest that the cultural studies in the field of RE are insufficient and thus more empirical studies are required. Secondly, we look at current solutions that are being adopted to assist in improving the cultural aspect of the requirements elicitation process. In the following step we map the identified communication gaps to the SPI Manifesto Values revealing the manifestations of the problems and finally we prescribe a set of recommendations that could be exercised and fulfilled by actors in the requirements elicitation process in order for them to improve cultural considerations in the RE process. These recommendations address the shortcomings that were identified in the literature review and mapped the Values of the SPI Manifesto. The proposals regard technologies, platforms, methods, and frameworks that are readily available. A requirements elicitation process that adopts one or a number of these proposals can help alleviate the challenges invoked by stakeholders’ cultural diversity in the RE process, thus leading to systems development and deployment that much better reflects the requirements/needs of diverse stakeholders and users

Towards developing a software process improvement strategy through the application of ethical concepts

Aligning Software Process Improvement with the business and strategic goals of an enterprise is a core factor for process improvement. Achieving success in Software Process Improvement (SPI) has shown to be a problematic challenge for countless organisations. SPI, as a discipline, can be described as a set of use cases, each use case describing the logically related activities that must be undertaken. In addition, each use case is a description of the interactions between itself and the participants, i.e. the Actors. The nature of these interactions more often than not may demand, from the participant, the recognition, and fulfilment, of ethical duties. In this paper we customise a theoretical framework developed by the US Content Subcommittee of the Impact CS Steering Committee that specifies traditional moral and ethical concepts, which can be used to identify the moral issues concerning the Software Process Improvement field. An application of these conventional and generic ethical concepts is made to use cases such as: Determining Business Needs; Conducting Process Improvement Assessment; the Tailoring and Creation of Processes; and Deployment. In doing so a number of ethical issues are highlighted. In the application and utilisation of SPI: business process engineers, software engineering teams, process improvement managers, and so on must be aware of these ethical duties, which have been identified by the application of the moral and ethical concepts, as presented in this paper, in order to become more responsible professionals in general. We propose a set of heuristics for ethical engagement with the SPI discipline proposing that an effective SPI strategy must be underpinned with ethical consideration