Implementing Software Process Improvement Initiatives (SPII) - What are the Challenges?

Literature [Gra97] claims that up to 70% of software process improvement initiatives fail to achieve their intended goals. No single organization is likely to have the range of experience necessary to identify these critical factors. We need to examine abroad sample of projects undergoing SPI in order to determine characteristics that successful SPI efforts have in common, characteristics that unsuccessful SPI efforts have in common, and the factors that distinguish successes and failures. It seems likely that the answers will depend to some extent on the particular improvements attempted, the characteristics of the organization undergoing improvement, the application domain, the technical environment, and the people involved. Any effort to understand the results of SPI must take factors like these into account. The talk will address the key factors and constraints of software process improvement based on experiences with different companies in Europe. 1 Current State of SPII Software is a key business driver in the business today. As an example a customer project implements a totally new battery system for a new electrical car. This innovation is not possible without software. Time–to-market and cost focus considerations are normal restrictions to such projects. We always have to ask how dependent systems are from software and which role the correctness of these software systems plays to our business. Other interesting questions are how mature the organization and the management that implements such systems are and who is driving leadership for quality in such an organization. 1.1 What is Software Process improvement (SPI)? With SPI we try to improve the processes in our projects by using best practices coming from models such as CMMI-DEV, CMMI.ACQ, ISO 15504, Automotive SPICE or TPI.