7P. A Preliminary Study of the Use of Software Process Improvement Initiatives in Jamaica

Despite the acknowledged strides that information and communications technologies (ICT) have made, the information systems (IS) community has been plagued with the delivery of low quality information systems (IS). This phenomenon gave rise to a variety of software process improvement (SPI) interventions, aimed at reducing variability in the software production process, as a precursor to improving IS quality. However, SPI initiatives have targeted fairly large organizations and SPI research has been conducted mainly in developed countries, and very little in developing countries and smaller organizations such as those in Jamaica and the English-speaking Caribbean. We sought in this research to ascertain the level of awareness and intention to use SPI programs in Jamaican software development firms. Preliminary indications of our study revealed that a large majority of these firms are not aware of SPI programs; neither do they intend to adopt any form of SPI effort in the near future. Our findings provided the basis to support the claim for future research to explore the underlying causes for this lack of awareness and non-adoption of SPI programs among Jamaican firms