Understanding the Importance of Roles in Architecture-Related Process Improvement - A Case Study

In response to the increasingly challenging task of developing software, many companies turn to Software Process Improvement (SPI). One of many factors that SPI depends on is user (staff) involvement, which is complicated by the fact that process users may differ in viewpoints and priorities. In this paper, we present a case study in which we performed a preSPI examination of process users’ viewpoints and priorities with respect to their roles. The study was conducted by the means of a questionnaire sent out to the process users. The analysis reveals differences among roles regarding priorities, in particular for product managers and designers, but not regarding viewpoints. This indicates that further research should investigate in which situations roles are likely to differ and in which they are likely to be similar. Moreover, since we initially expected both viewpoints and priorities to differ, it indicates that it is important to cover these aspects in SPI, and not only rely on expectations.