Improving by Involving: A Case Study in a Small Software Company

One way of implementing Software Process Improvement (SPI) is to empower employees to carry out decisions made by management. An alternative way is to invite developers and project leaders to participate in all phases of planning and implementing SPI projects. Such participation has always been a central goal and one of the pillars of organization development and change, and has also been shown to be one of the factors with the strongest influence on SPI success. However, there are few studies reporting how participation can be done in practice in software companies doing SPI. In this paper, we describe how long-term participation can be realized in various SPI initiatives using several participation techniques like search conferences, survey feedback, autonomous work groups, quality circles, and learning meetings. The research has been carried out in a small Norwegian software company called Kongsberg Spacetec, over a period of eight years.