The QualOSS Process Evaluation: Initial Experiences with Assessing Open Source Processes

For traditional software development, process maturity models (CMMI, SPICE) have long been used to assess expected product quality and project predictability. For the case of OSS, however, these models are generally perceived as inadequate. In practice, though, many OSS communities are wellorganized, and there is evidence of varying levels of process maturity in OSS projects. This paper presents work in progress—performed as part of the EU QualOSS project—on developing a process process evaluation framework specifically aimed at OSS projects. We present a first version of our evaluation procedures, and discuss some lessons learned during its preliminary application to small number of OSS projects.