Process Assessment and ISO/IEC 15504: A Reference Book (The Springer International Series in Engineering and Computer Science) [Hardcover]

Han van Loon (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 15, 2004 | ISBN-10: 0387231722 | ISBN-13: 978-0387231723 | Edition: 1

Process Assessment and ISO/IEC15504: A Reference Book provides the reader with guidance on the emerging ISO/IEC 15504 Process Assessment Standard. This is the first book dedicated to the standard. The standard goes beyond quality audits, to help you assess how well your organization performs. The book provides guidance for readers wishing to understand the power and benefits of a process approach and process assessment. It guides the reader through the various parts of the standard in an understandable and practical manner, grounded upon the people-process-product model.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Process Assessment and ISO/IEC 15504: A Reference Book, Second Edition, provides the reader with guidance on the emerging ISO/IEC 15504 Process Assessment Standard. ISO/IEC 15504 standard is now complete with the publication of Part 5 of the standard. Originally published in 2004 as the first book dedicated to the standard, this second edition of the reference book, represents an updated version of practical aspects of process assessment, and covers the new process assessment models in the standard. The standard goes beyond quality audits, to help you assess how well your organization performs. This book provides guidance for readers wishing to understand the power and benefits of a process approach and process assessment. It guides the reader through the various parts of the standard in an understandable and practical manner, grounded upon the people-process-product model. This professional book offers a separate companion guidebook: Process Assessment and Improvement: A Practical Guide. Process Assessment and ISO/IEC 15504: A Reference Book, Second Edition is designed for practitioners, including managers of software firms, IT departments, quality assurance professionals and assessors using process assessment methods. This volume is also suitable for researchers, libraries and graduate-level students in computer science and engineering.   --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 281 pages
• Publisher: Springer; 1 edition (December 15, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0387231722
• ISBN-13: 978-0387231723
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,434,899 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent for quality professionals, especially assessors, November 30, 2004

By 

Bernhard Gschwentner - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Process Assessment and ISO/IEC 15504: A Reference Book (The Springer International Series in Engineering and Computer Science) (Hardcover)

This is a technical reference book of the ISO/IEC 15504 standard for process assessment. The author provides lots of guidance based upon his personal experience on the standard and clarifies several aspects that are not always clear to the new process assessors and organizations starting to perform assessments. He provides a reader guide at the start to direct readers of varying experience and roles to what may interest them most.

The author poses some rhetorical questions about standards in general and process assessment standards in particular. He then starts to discuss process models in an easy to read way, with lots of diagrams illustrating his text. The author eases into the requirements for process assessment so that reader unfamiliar with the standard are gradually introduced to increased detail as needed. The author then explains the capability dimension, and how to interpret it with lots of good reference and comparison to the standard. He uses a neat analogy of a home to illustrate the increasing utility of the capability dimension measurement scale.

Readers are then taken through a variety of well-illustrated process assessment models and process lifecycle models. The author covers lots of existing standards that are related to ISO/IEC 15504, including software lifecycles, ITIL, SEI CMMI and FAA iCMM.

Although this is a technical reference book, it contains enough generally useful information to be readable for anyone interested in or involved in organizations that are planning or using process assessment to improve their business. See also my review of the companion Practical Guide, which describes the uses of results of assessments. A good technical reference book with some solid and readable advice for less technical readers. I recommend this book for quality professionals, especially assessors, but also anyone deciding upon the way they want to assess their business.