December 2001
Volume 4 • Number 1

Contents

PROCESS IMPROVEMENT
Rapid Assessment to Solicit Process Improvement in Small and Medium-Sized Organizations

by Giacomo Bucci, University of Florence, Italy, and Maurizio Campanai and Giovanni A. Cignoni, Cesvit SpA

In recent years, software process improvement (SPI) has achieved a good level of penetration in medium to large organizations. Several well-known methodologies exist and are applied as usual tools in the organizational processes devoted to continuous improvement. Unfortunately, this is not the case for many small and micro organizations that often are unaware both of the basic software best practices and the existence of SPI methodologies.

The need for making such organizations aware of SPI concepts, as well as the potential benefits of their application, was one of the motivations for a project funded by the European Commission. To overcome the typical inertia shown by organizations toward usual dissemination initiatives, the project performed rapid assessments to allow enterprises to “taste” SPI.

This article describes the rapid assessment method and its use as a powerful way for both diffusing software best practices and proposing actual improvement paths to enterprises. Data collected through assessments in Central Italy are presented together with some findings about the adoption of this approach.

Key words: software best practices (SBPs), software process improvement (SPI), software process improvement and capability determination (SPICE)

The full text of this article may be found in the print journal. To subscibe go to /quality-press/display-item/index.html?item=SUBSCR_SQP.