Software process improvement is an important activity which starts when an organization plans to enhance/purify the capabilities of its ongoing processes. When improvement or change is planned or started, there are a number of factors which originate and affect the effectiveness of software process improvement. If they are not identified and dealt with proper expertise, they can leave adverse effects in the form of low effectiveness, high cost, low quality etc. Such factors change the intensity or the expected results of software process improvement. It is very important to understand and highlight these factors in order to make the process improvement effective and efficient in an organization during change. This master thesis is written to answer the research questions which elaborate the understanding of software process improvement and factors affecting the software process improvement during change in an organization. Moreover, a systematic review is also performed in identifying and prioritizing the factors which affect the software process improvement activity in change. The outcomes of this research can be helpful in understanding the factors affecting SPI during change.

In the competitive global economy, increasing customer value by improving software product quality is the aim for organizations. Academia and industry are collaboratively striving to find new ways to achieve this goal. The last two decades have seen a mind shift where emphasis is now on improving processes to improve the quality of products. This approach has its roots in the realization that a better development process would lead to a better quality product. Based on this process improvement frameworks were created. These frameworks enable organizations to systematically improve their development processes and strive towards the ultimate goal of improving product quality. However, these initiatives were not always successful. The deriving factors that make the adoption and implementation of such frameworks a success were still unknown. In this regard, several primary studies have been conducted to identify the factors that make software process improvement initiative successful. Researchers have been investigating factors that affect success of Software Process Improvement (SPI). There was still a lack of a secondary study where systematic approach has been used to find factors that affect the success of SPI. In our thesis project we present results of the systematic review to accumulate success factors for SPI. These findings were validated by conducting an industrial survey. With our secondary study we have identified 31 important success factor categories of SPI. We have contributed to the body of knowledge by devising formal definitions for important factors. We have also unveiled the relationship of SPI success factors not only to different SPI framework but also to software process areas.

Context. Software Process Improvement (SPI) initiatives like Capability Maturity Model (CMM), Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI), Bootstrap etc., have been developed on the primary agenda of continuous software process improvement. Similarly, about two decades ago, the United Kingdom Accreditation Services (UKAS) have laid down a set of guidelines based on the ISO quality standards for providing certification to organizations named TickIT. TickIT is now obsolete with its successor scheme TickITplus taking up its place with a lot of significant additions. All the companies which were certified based on TickIT guidelines (more than 1000 companies) were asked to move to TickITplus in order to keep their TickIT certification. However, until now it has been three years since the inception of TickITplus and only 70 companies have adopted TickITplus. This is way below relative to the number of TickIT certified organizations. The present thesis is done in order to find the factors why most of the companies have not adopted TickITplus and also why the 70 organizations have moved to TickITplus.   Objectives In this study, an attempt has been made to accomplish the following objectives: Identifying the changes that have been brought about in the new scheme. The factors that a software organization looks into while adopting or migrating to a new software quality certification scheme are identified. Validate these factors with the help of survey and interviews. Analyze the results of survey and interviews to provide the reasons why most of the organizations haven’t adopted TickITplus certification scheme. Methods. This research is done by using a mixed method approach by incorporating both quantitative and qualitative research methods. An online survey is conducted with the help of an online questionnaire as part of the quantitative leg. Two survey questionnaires have been framed to gather responses. With respect to the qualitative research method interviews are conducted to get a wider understanding about the factors that led an organization to migrate or not to migrate to TickITplus. The gathered data is analyzed using statistical methods like bivariate and univariate analysis for the quantitative method and thematic coding has been applied for the qualitative method. Triangulation method is used to validate the data obtained by correlating the results from the survey and interviews with those extracted from the literature review. Results. Results pertaining to the reasons why companies have moved to and also why other companies haven’t taken up TickITplus have been gathered from the survey and interviews. It was identified that high costs and low customer demand were the main reasons for the organizations not to choose TickITplus while among the organizations which have moved to TickITplus have also chosen the scheme based on customer requirement. However, few other reasons apart from these have also been identified which are presented in this document Conclusions. Conclusions have been drawn citing the importance of costs incurred for implementing TickITplus as a reason for not selecting TickITplus as it was considered very expensive. Among other reasons customer requirement was also low which was identified as a factor for the relatively low number of TickITplus certified organizations. On the other hand, among the TickITplus certified firms, customer demand forms the prominent reason for moving to TickITplus and lack of appropriate people to take up the work was considered as an important hindrance while implementing TickITplus. Several other reasons and challenges have also been identified which are clearly detailed in the document.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 23-26, 2000 / Town & Country Hotel and Conference Center, San Diego, California / The Capability Maturity Model (CMM) developed by the Software Engineering Institute is widely promoted as a method to help decrease the volume of error riddled and late software projects. Because of the projected benefits, the 96th Communications Group/SC (SC) at Eglin Air Force Base began an intensive software process improvement effort in late 1997. This effort was rewarded in September 1999 when the group achieved a CMM Level 2 software rating on its first attempt. As of December 1999, 68% of assessed organizations remained at Level 1 on their first or second assessment. The SC success was not only obtained on its first attempt, but also 11 months ahead of the industry standard. The Level 2 rating was accomplished in the volatile environment needed to support the test and evaluation mission. This environment includes frequent requirement changes, short notice modifications, and externally driven schedules. One reason this milestone was possible is close and direct involvement by management. This paper will present additional factors to implementing a successful software process improvement effort.

Background. It is significant to constantly change and improve the software process to thrive in the software market with rapidly changing requirement and situation. However, very small entities(VSEs) have difficulties to adopt software process improvement that have played an important role in software market, because they usually have some unique characteristics, such as informal and fewer documents, tight budget, and less human resources. Therefore, we believe it is necessary to study factors that are crucial to successful conducting SPI, to help inexperienced VSEs with limited resource implement SPI with reasonable cost. Objectives. The overall aim of our research is to analyse critical success factors about successfully conduct software process improvement for Very Small Entities. The objectives are based on the aim as following: 1) Identifying the special characteristics of VSEs which related to conducting SPI, 2) Identifying the state-of-the-art critical success factors when VSEs conducting SPI both in literature and practice: verifying and prioritizing the factors, and 3) Investigating the strategies that VSEs can take in order to successfully implement SPI. Methods. In order to investigate the critical factors and barriers need to focus and avoid during the improvement, we implemented a systematic literature review as the first phase. Then a survey questionnaire as the second phase to validate the results gained from the systematic literature review through consulting industrial software engineers. Results. The final result includes 80 success factors which have been mentioned at least once in the primary studies, a few characteristics of VSEs and strategies for SPI in VSEs. Among the 80 factors, we chose 29 factors as CSFs that were mentioned more than three times, then selected the first 15 CSFs as survey questions material. Through the survey, we gathered the evaluation of all factors from two areas and some suggestion or opinion of SPI in VSEs, explained the 29 CSFs and two ranking tables about top factors from the SLR and the survey, discussed 14 CSFs from both ranking tables, then provided specific strategies for each of the common 8 factors. Conclusions. For helping VSEs that intend to conduct SPI with limited resources, we answered our research questions through SLR and Survey, found 29 state-of-the-art success factors of SPI in VSEs, ranked 15 of them and provided a description, discussion, and strategies. Selected and prioritised success factors would be supportive for VSEs to ration their budget. Furthermore, we hope we can inspire VSEs who are having trouble to implement SPI by providing strategies.

O avanço recente da tecnologia na área de sistemas digitais representa uma grande oportunidade para realizar um importante progresso em diversos aspectos dos sistemas de controle e proteção tradicionais. No entanto, os requisitos provenientes do uso intensivo de software em sistemas críticos de segurança, aumenta a demanda por uma abordagem adequada que possa ser baseada na experiência nesta área. Apesar de vários modelos de capacidade de maturidade estarem em constante desenvolvimento, ainda é um desafio estabelecer uma forma coerente para a melhoria e avaliação do processo de desenvolvimento de software. O objetivo desta pesquisa é propor um método para obtenção de perfis de capacidade baseados na aplicação do modelo de referência brasileiro para melhoria do processo de software MR-MPS, em conjunto com a extensão de segurança do modelo de capacidade e maturidade CMMI-DEV +SAFE, embasado pela percepção de especialistas em segurança por meio da aplicação de um modelo de decisão por múltiplos critérios. / The recent technology advance in the digital systems area represents a great opportunity to make important progress in many aspects of traditional control and protection systems. However, requirements derived from the intensive use of software in safety critical systems raises the demand for a suitable approach that can be based on the expertise in this area. Although a number of capability maturity models have been in constant development, it is still challenging to establish a coherent path for software process improvement and evaluation. The goal of this research work is to propose a method for building capability profiles based on the application of the Brazilian Reference Model for Software Process Improvement MR-MPS, along with the Capability Maturity Model for Development safety extension CMMI-DEV +SAFE, supported by safety engineers insight through the application of a multi criteria decision model.

O avanço recente da tecnologia na área de sistemas digitais representa uma grande oportunidade para realizar um importante progresso em diversos aspectos dos sistemas de controle e proteção tradicionais. No entanto, os requisitos provenientes do uso intensivo de software em sistemas críticos de segurança, aumenta a demanda por uma abordagem adequada que possa ser baseada na experiência nesta área. Apesar de vários modelos de capacidade de maturidade estarem em constante desenvolvimento, ainda é um desafio estabelecer uma forma coerente para a melhoria e avaliação do processo de desenvolvimento de software. O objetivo desta pesquisa é propor um método para obtenção de perfis de capacidade baseados na aplicação do modelo de referência brasileiro para melhoria do processo de software MR-MPS, em conjunto com a extensão de segurança do modelo de capacidade e maturidade CMMI-DEV +SAFE, embasado pela percepção de especialistas em segurança por meio da aplicação de um modelo de decisão por múltiplos critérios. / The recent technology advance in the digital systems area represents a great opportunity to make important progress in many aspects of traditional control and protection systems. However, requirements derived from the intensive use of software in safety critical systems raises the demand for a suitable approach that can be based on the expertise in this area. Although a number of capability maturity models have been in constant development, it is still challenging to establish a coherent path for software process improvement and evaluation. The goal of this research work is to propose a method for building capability profiles based on the application of the Brazilian Reference Model for Software Process Improvement MR-MPS, along with the Capability Maturity Model for Development safety extension CMMI-DEV +SAFE, supported by safety engineers insight through the application of a multi criteria decision model.

In this thesis we have described the role of meetings in software development and their impact on process improvement. We have investigated some factors; which could be used to improve organization process e.g. strategic management, understanding of business and its processes, learning and evaluation of resources. A survey has been conducted with the help of a questionnaire to analyze the meeting practices in the small and medium scale software companies. A process model and a simulation have been designed to measure the impacts of meetings on the productivity of organizations which claim the utilization of agile process. The designed model is an extension of Hamid & Madnick’s process model and the simulation is a newly developed web based application that performs meeting scheduling. The application is developed with the concept of Software As A Service (SAAS) by using the Framework Symfony and programming languages PHP and MySQL.

In this thesis the software development process and in particular, the requirements management processes in a major software development company have been investigated. The current problems related to requirements quality and process performances have been identified. Process improvement measures have been proposed based on the suggestions found in the relevant literature. The current process and the improved version have been compared with respect to the process evaluation metrics proposed particularly for software process improvement.

A software process improvement study is presented. The literature on software development processes and their improvement is reviewed. The current peer review process at Software Engineering Directorate of the X Company, Ankara, T&uuml / rkiye (XCOM) is studied and the static software development metrics based on a recent proposal have been evaluated. The static software metrics based improvement suggestions and the author&rsquo / s improvement suggestions discussed with the senior staff are compared. An improved peer review process is proposed. The static software development metrics have been evaluated on the improved process to see the impacts of the improvements. The improved process has been already implemented at XCOM and preliminary results have been obtained.