OPT: organization and process together

The role of humans in the software development process must be studied in the context of their organizational con guration. The organizational structure within which the process executes has a profound effect on its outcome. The communication and interaction problems associated with human involvement in development cannot be addressed by process improvement alone. The solution must include organizational improvement as well. Because organizational factors are complex, their analysis is a non-trivial task. Methods are needed for improving both organizations and processes, as well as the relationships between them. The aim of the OPT approach is the improvement of software development through improvement of organizational structures and processes. The approach is an iterative improvement method. The steps include modeling the relationship between the organization and the process, measuring various properties of this relationship, and choosing organizational and process changes to be implemented.