Return on Investment (ROI) from Software Process Improvement as Measured by US Industry

The United States Air Force sponsored research to provide US industry with data on the positive, quantifiable benefits, or Return-on-Investment (ROI), for software process improvement programs based on the Software Engineering Institute's (SEI) Capability Maturity Model for Software (CMM). The research investigated the published ROI claims for software process improvement and sought evidence of the existence of new ROI data in organizations that had been engaged in software process improvement over the past several years. Evidence of new ROI data was found, though not typically in the form of a dollar returned for a dollar invested. Instead, ROI existed in the form of benefits, such as increased productivity, reduced schedule time, improved quality, etc. -benefits defined in terms of meeting organizational and customer goals. This paper describes the research results, which include a profile of metric usage according to software maturity level (Levels 1 through 5), the organizational factors that contribute to higher and lower process maturity, trends in the length of time being spent by industry at each maturity level, and a summary of the ROI data that US industry has amassed.