Customer Reviews

Elements of Software Process Assessment & Improvement (Practitioners)

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Khaled's book provided some good information when it was published but is now outdated as ISO 15504 (called SPICE in the book) has been extensively updated. Two new books on the topic area have recently been published through Springer: Process Assessment and ISO/IEC 15504 - A Reference Book, and Process Assessment and Improvement - A practical guide for managers, quality professionals and assessors. I would recommend readers to look to these books as providing the latest information and real practical implementation guidance.

This 4-part collection of essays is just what the title proclaims: elements of software process assessment and/or improvement. While the book is organized by subject area (1-common models in use, 2-the business case for SPI, 3-guidance and 4-new developments), the book does purport to be a guide for performing/passing assessments or effecting process improvement. However, the real value of the essays is the wide range of topics that are addressed. While you will probably not find all of them useful for a specific model or approach, you will almost certainly find many to be applicable to a strategy for process assessments or improvement.

Part 1, Models, covers the CMM, software product procurement risk management, SPICE, Bootstrap, ISO 9001 and the P-CMM. This part ends with a chapter that provide an approach and generic steps and guidelines for software process improvement.

Because I have a strong interest in business case development, Part 2 is my favorite section of the book, and one from which all readers will benefit regardless of the model they are currently using or considering. Chapter titles are: The Economics of Software Process Improvements, The Payoff for Software Process Improvement and Empirical Studies of Software Process Assessment Methods. This is excellent foundation material for making the business case and/or determining the ROI of a particular model or improvement strategy.

Part 3 offers excellent insights into the trials and tribulations of assessments. Chapters here are Essence and Accidents in SEI-Style Assessments (this is by a favorite author, Ken Dymond who has written probably the best book on CMM I've read), Tailoring the CMM for Small Businesses, Small Organizations, and Small Projects (proving that CMM is within the reach of small organizations as well as large ones), Starting the Climb Towards the CMM Level 2 Plateau (that first step is the hardest), The Role of Design Analysis in Process Improvement, Action Planning. Part 4, New Developments, contains two excellent papers titled Modeling Software Processes Quantitatively and Evaluating the Performance of Process Alternatives, and Metrics and Laws of Software Evolution.

Overall, this is an invaluable resource to organizations pursuing software process improvement within the framework of one of the common models, as well as SPI and SQA professionals who want to broaden their knowledge.