Process improvement involves analysis of different process redesign variants. Evaluation of all these variants might result in a large complicated process model or maintenance of several similar models. The paper proposes a process improvement scenario design and simulation approach aimed at simplifying the analysis of such interrelated models. The approach uses a base process as the evaluation...

This paper examines the efficiency and effectiveness of a prescriptive systems development methodology in practice. The UK Government’s mandatory Structured Systems Analysis and Design Method (SSADM) was examined to determine its value to software projects. The evidence was collected from interviews with 17 project managers, discussions with participants on 3 large SSADM projects and from obser...

This paper is about identifying and analyzing techniques that can be used in a business process improvement (BPI) situation. To determine suitable techniques, the term BPI is defined and criteria are derived to analyze the usability of the selected techniques. Over 300 techniques from various improvement methods were reduced to those techniques which can be applied to help improve business proc...

Process improvement is difficult to teach as it requires a firm basis in terms of a welldefined process and systematic measurement. In our large-scale software development course we are teaching process improvement using an experience base. The main improvement objective of the course is to teach improvement in terms of improved effort predictability. This also forms the basis to teach process ...

....................................................................................................................... i Preface........................................................................................................................ iii Acknowledgements .................................................................................................... v

The Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) is a structured representation of software development processes that can support an organisation’s software process improvement (SPI) strategies. However, CMMI and SPI initiatives generally exhibit low levels of adoption and limited success. One of the major reasons for these shortcomings is that many organisations undertake SPI initiatives with...

Surviving in the increasingly competitive software business requires more than hiring smart, knowledgeable engineers and buying the latest development tools. You also need to use effective software development processes, so those smart engineers can systematically use the best technical and managerial practices to successfully complete their projects. More organizations are looking at software ...

In order to prepare students for careers as software process engineers, software engineering education needs to adopt innovative instructional designs to support effectively the learning of required knowledge and skills. In this paper, we propose a cross-course design for teaching software process improvement and assessment in a graduate course in combination with an undergraduate capstone proj...

There has been a lack of empirical research related to the role of IT in process improvement in a multidimensional way. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the extent that IT could be used (from low tech to high tech and constraint to proactive), type of process reengineering projects employed (compromise to radical) and their effect on firm performance. The firm performance was defined...

This paper presents the TPI-model, which is based on current state-of-the-art test process improvement practices. The model gives practical guidelines for assessing the maturity level of testing in an organisation and for step by step improvement of the process. The purpose of such improvement could be reaching CMM level 3. The model consists of 20 key areas, each with different levels of matur...