An empirical review of software process assessments

In the recent past there has been a rapid increase in the use of process assessments in the software industry. Such assessments play an important role in initiating and tracking process improvements. In addition, there has been a proliferation of best practice models that are the basis for the assessments. The purpose of this chapter is to review the empirical evidence that exists to date on the efficacy of process assessments, with a specific focus on the CMM for software and the emerging ISO/IEC 15504 international standard. The available evidence is quite extensive, and supports the claims that assessments can be an effective tool for process improvement. We also highlight gaps in the literature where further work needs to be done. 1 ® CMM and Capability Maturity Model are registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. SM CMMI and IDEAL are service marks of Carnegie Mellon University. 2 The Software Engineering Institute (SEI) is a federally funded research and development center sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense and operated by Carnegie Mellon University.