A Model to Measure Organizational Readiness for
Software Process Improvement
Aldo Dagnino and Andrew Cordes
ABB Corporate Research, 940 Main Campus Drive, Raleigh, NC. 27606, U.S.A.
Keywords: Software Process Improvement, Change Management, Change Agent.
Abstract: This paper presents a model that can be used to measure the readiness of an organization to engage in a
software process improvement (SPI) program. This model focuses on the main stakeholders of an SPI
program, which include the “Sponsor”, the “Change Agent”, and the “Organization” directly affected by the
improvements. The model identifies the drivers that motivate the SPI main stakeholders and assigns metrics
to these drivers so that it is possible to evaluate the readiness of the whole organization to start and maintain
an SPI program. The model presented augments the concepts of “Change Management” from the Software
Engineering Institute by incorporating the experiences of ABB in implementing SPI programs in its
business units during the past decade. The paper presents as well an example on how this model has been
used to track the evolution of SPI in an ABB organization.
1 INTRODUCTION
Like any software development project,
implementing a software process improvement (SPI)
initiative in an organization presents risks that must
be identified and managed to ensure the highest
likelihood of success. One common risk in SPI
initiatives revolves around how ready an
organization is to accept and embrace the changes
that an SPI initiative brings. When an organization
is used to carry out their productive activities in a
certain way, members of the organization have
difficulty to make changes in the way they work
(Massey et al, 1998). Change occurs when any part
of the organizational system is modified or replaced.
Change means replacing what is established in
favour of something new. In a software process
improvement activity, old and established
development practices are replaced by improved,
streamlined, and more efficient practices and
processes. Even if the new practices and processes
selected for adoption enhance the organization’s
operations, there is always a tendency for the
organization to resist the change. Organizational
change readiness refers to the capacity that an
organization possesses to respond to new challenges
in its operational environment. This paper presents a
model that can be used to quantify this risk and
measure the mitigation progress being made during
the course of the SPI effort.
2 SOFTWARE PROCESS
IMPROVEMENT (SPI)
SPI refers to the use of improved software
development practices in an organization to improve
the quality of products, increase customer
satisfaction, reduce development costs, increase
employee’s job fulfilment, and enhance delivery
times. SPI activities are typically conducted using
software development process frameworks and
standards such as CMMI-DEV, ISO/IEC,
SWEBOK, and others. When conducting SPI
initiatives, two important factors need to be
considered. The first factor involves the technical
issues related with the process frameworks used in
the SPI initiative. Second, it is important to consider
those human and organizational factors that impact
the change and occur due to natural human
resistance to change (Lopez and Garay 2012).
Early research in the SPI field was primarily
focused on the technical, procedural, quality and
instrumental aspects and models (Ferreira and
Wazlawick, 2011). More recent research in the SPI
has recognized the importance of both the technical
329
Dagnino A. and Cordes A..
A Model to Measure Organizational Readiness for Software Process Improvement.
DOI: 10.5220/0005002303290336
In Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Software Engineering and Applications (ICSOFT-EA-2014), pages 329-336
ISBN: 978-989-758-036-9
Copyright
c
2014 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)
and organizational and human/management aspects
of the software process improvement activity
(Khokhar et al., 2010). Muller et al. (2010) assert
that not considering the organizational aspect of a
software process improvement initiative leads to a
failure in the initiative.
3 ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE
READINESS
Organizational change readiness refers to the
capability that an organization exhibits at a
particular point in time to adopt a new behaviour and
respond to new challenges in its operational
environment. Software process improvement is
viewed as a “change” activity within an organization
because SPI inevitably bring a change in processes,
procedures, policies, methods, and sometimes even
tools.
The Software Engineering Institute (SEI) and
Debou (2009) have defined a change matrix that
identifies the necessary elements for change and
how the lack of these elements results in frustrated
and ineffective efforts, as shown in Figure 1.
Necessary elements for change, and hence for the
implementation of a successful SPI program include:
(a) vision on where we want the organization to be
with the proposed SPI program; (b) skills in the
organization necessary to achieve the improvements;
(c) incentives and dis-incentives provided by senior
management to the organization to change its
behaviour; (d) resources needed to successfully
conduct the SPI activity; (e) an action plan that
guides the SPI program activities. Figure 1 shows
that the lack of vision in an SPI program causes
confusion in the organization. The lack of skills
necessary to conduct the SPI activities causes
anxiety in the organization. The lack of incentives or
dis-incentives to members of the organization
affected by the SPI activities cause a delay in the
SPI program. The lack of adequate resources (tools,
time, people, etc.) causes great frustration in an
organization trying to implement a successful SPI
program. And finally, the lack of an action plan
causes false starts and disorientation in the SPI
program.
When an organization is faced with a severe
change prospect such as a major SPI program,
people in the organization may suffer from similar
reactions as the stages of loss and grief which
include denial and isolation, anger, bargaining,
depression, and acceptance (Kubler-Ross, 1969).
Figure 1: Organizational Change Matrix.
In an SPI program is important to recognize that
people will embrace changes differently. The
advocates see the changes that the SPI program
brings as a “good thing” and will support the
initiative. The apathetic do not care initially about
the initiative until they see how it affects them. The
incubators have thought about trying new things, so
the SPI initiative may have some appeal to them.
And the resisters have concerns about the SPI
initiative and make things difficult for the
implementation of the changes through overt or
covert resistance.
4 READINESS ASSESSMENT
MODEL
Kautz (2000), Maturro and Saavedra (2012), and the
Software Engineering Institute (2014) identify four
components essential to change management in an
organization. The first component evaluated is the
organizational readiness that refers to the load an
organization has at a particular point in time with
respect to management issues, change initiatives,
and operational and legal issues taking place. The
second component evaluated refers to the sponsor’s
commitment and readiness to the SPI activity that is
supported by what the sponsor expresses about the
SPI initiative, by the sponsor’s inherent
characteristics as a leader, and by the visible actions
of the sponsor towards the SPI initiative. The third
component evaluated is the change agent (CA)
commitment and readiness to the SPI activity that
evaluates what the CA expresses about the SPI
initiative, the inherent characteristics of the CA, and
the behaviour of the CA towards the SPI initiative.
The fourth component evaluated refers to the level
of organizational expertise and experience that the
members in the organization have relative to the SPI
initiative (SPI model utilized, appraisal
ICSOFT-EA2014-9thInternationalConferenceonSoftwareEngineeringandApplications
330
methodologies, process improvement cycle, etc.).
The rEAdiness asSEssment model (EASE)
presented in this paper evaluates the four above
mentioned components, as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2: EASE Model.
Sections 4.1 to 4.4 below provide details on the
main factors that are individually evaluated. Based
on his/her observation, the evaluator gives weights
(1-5) to each of the factors and composes an overall
index for each component. Section 5, provides an
example of the evaluation utilizing a real-world
example.
4.1 Organizational Readiness
An SPI initiative will almost certainly increase the
stress level in an organization. For this reason is
important to evaluate the stress conditions in the
organization before starting the SPI initiative. Table
1 shows detailed stress factors that need to be
evaluated before an SPI initiative begins and
monitored as the SPI program makes progress. It is
important to have a sense of whether there are
currently other competing initiatives such as
introduction of a new technology, or a major
construction project, a major litigation, etc.
Similarly, it is important to understand the general
attitude and experience the organization has towards
any change that has occurred in the past.
Each of the elements in Table 1 needs to be
evaluated before the SPI initiative starts (typically
by the potential SPI project manager, or an assessor)
and they need to be continuously evaluated at
determined points in time during the SPI project. In
the EASE model, an experienced assessor evaluates
each sub-element of an element of a component by
assigning a weight between 1 and 5. Taking an
example from Table 1, under the component
“Organizational Readiness”, the “Process Changes”
element has as sub-element the “New customer
service program” to which the readiness evaluator
gives a weight of 5 if at the time of the evaluation
there is an active and engaging customer service
program ongoing in the organization. On the other
hand, if there is no customer service program, the
evaluator assigns a weight of 1 to same sub-element.
Once weights w
ijk
(where i = component i, and j =
element j, and k = sub-element k) have been
assigned, an overall weight W
ij
is calculated as


ijk
)/n to calculate the element index. The
overall component index (Evaluate Organizational
Readiness for SPI) is a normalized summation value
of the weights of each element.
Table 1: Factors of organizational stress.
Management Issues
New senior management
New skills or employee retention
Culture change effort
Performance appraisal
Major reorganization or downsizing
Process Changes
New customer service program
Ongoing quality initiative
New Quality initiative
Productivity improvement project
History on past improvement projects
Operational and Legal
New Technology introduction
Major construction project
Working extra-time
Strike
Major Litigation
4.2 Sponsor Commitment and
Readiness to SPI
Members of the software development organization
are very perceptive on how the sponsor(s) of the SPI
initiative behaves and talks relative to the initiative,
as the sponsor’s support is key to the success of the
SPI project. Table 2 shows the relevant
characteristics that a sponsor should exhibit in a
successful SPI initiative. These factors are evaluated
in the EASE model to measure the level of
commitment that the sponsor has to the SPI
initiative.
The sponsor(s) needs to be very careful on how
he/she communicates with the rest of the
organization about the SPI initiative. The sponsor(s),
as the main promoter of SPI, needs to publically
Evaluate Organizational
Readiness for SPI
Evaluate Sponsor
Commitment and
Readiness to SPI
Evaluate Change Agent
(CA) Commitment and
Readiness to SPI
Evaluate Organizational
Expertise and Experience
on SPI Initiative
Management Issues Index
Process Changes Index
Operational and Legal Index
What Sponsor Expresses Index
Sponsor Characteristics Index
How Sponsor Acts Index
What CA Expresses Index
CA Characteristics Index
How CA Acts Index
Sponsor Expertise Index
CA Expertise
Organizational Expertise
Organizational Readiness Index
Sponsor Commitment Index
CA Commitment Index
Organizational Expertise Index
AModeltoMeasureOrganizationalReadinessforSoftwareProcessImprovement
331
Table 2: Sponsor characteristics for SPI.
What the Sponsor(s) Expresses
Expressed how SPI relates to company strategy
Expressed strong personal commitment to SPI
Communicates clear and understandable message
Communicates the impact to affected individuals
Communicates objectives of SPI to organization
Promotes problem solving attitude
Publically expresses behaviours that must change
Communicates to encourage direct feedback
Observable Sponsor Characteristics
Strong motivation to implement SPI
Believes in the business benefits of SPI
Shows strong support if SPI to direct reports
Demonstrates personal changes aligned with SPI
Demonstrates willingness to pay the price for SPI
Strong and tenacious in pursuing the SPI activities
Invests effort to build support for the CPI effort
Has good relationship with change implementers
Has good relationship with people affected by SPI
Has a good track record in past change initiatives
How Sponsor Acts
Commits the necessar
y
resources to SPI
Establishes incentives to reinforce chan
g
e
Emphasizes rewards for achieving change
Focuses on reinforcement on direct reports
Emphasizes formal and informal reco
g
nition
Links rewards to the achievement of change
Establishes mechanisms for data gathering to
monitor progress of change
Makes clear how to report SPI
p
ro
g
ress
Makes old
b
ehaviours difficult to perfor
m
Makes new behaviours easier to perfor
promote behaviour modification, needs to have a
clear message to the organization,and overall needs
to have a clear commitment to the SPI initiative. The
sponsor(s) needs to understand the business value
that the SPI initiative will bring to the organization.
The sponsor(s) needs to demonstrate to his/her direct
reports that he/she supports and is willing to pay the
price for the initiative. The sponsor(s) needs to have
a very good relationship with the change agent. The
organization needs to see the sponsor(s) “walk the
talk” and align behind the SPI initiative. The sponsor
needs to make SPI a priority, commit the necessary
resources, and reinforce the change with the
appropriate incentives or disincentives. Table 2
shows the main characteristics that a sponsor must
exhibit to increase the probability that the SPI
initiative succeeds. The sponsor needs to be
evaluated in each of these factors before and during
the course of the SPI initiative.
4.3 Change Agent Commitment and
Readiness to SPI
The change agent(s) is the person(s) that leads the
SPI initiative and makes it successful. The change
agent needs to work with the sponsor(s) to move
forward the SPI initiative smoothly and to report
progress.
The change agent typically manages the SPI
project, builds support in the organization for SPI,
and works closely with the affected people.
The change agent also monitors and tracks the
SPI initiative as an internal project in the
organization which is at the same level as a
development project. The change agent is
instrumental in identifying and managing the
sources of resistance in the SPI initiative and must
respond to the different types of resistance (overt
and covert). There are different types of change
agents: (a) traditional, who are focused on delivery
of SPI results; (b) facilitators, who emphasize
transfer of change to stakeholders; (c) and
advocators, who are considered to be the true
champions of change. Table 3 shows the main
characteristics that a change agent must exhibit to
increase the probability of his/her success with the
SPI initiative. The change agent needs to be
evaluated on each of these factors before and during
the SPI initiative to increase his/her effectiveness.
4.4 Organizational Expertise
This is the fourth element considered in EASE, and
it evaluates the level of technical expertise and
competence that the organization has relative to the
SPI initiative. The Sponsor, change agent, and the
affected organization need to have a competent level
of experience and technical expertise in the change
management process, in the SPI software framework
utilized (i.e. CMMI-DEV, IEEE, SCRUM, XP,
SWEBOK, etc.), diagnostics methodology,
continuous process improvement, etc. Table 4
provides the specific factors evaluated in terms of
organizational expertise.
5 A REAL WORLD CASE
As part of the ABB software process improvement
initiative, a business unit that develops software for
the power industry implemented a multi-year
software process improvement program. An SPI
initiative consists of five stages: (a) Initiate; (b)
Diagnose; (c) Establish; (d) Act; (e) Leverage.
ICSOFT-EA2014-9thInternationalConferenceonSoftwareEngineeringandApplications
332
Table 3: Change agent characteristics for SPI.
What Change Agent Expresses
Believes on the rewards of SPI
Understands the disruption that change will bring
Is committed to the goals of the SPI project
Expresses interest in being responsible for SPI
Is optimistic about the potential SPI results
Expresses confidence in Sponsor's commitment
Believes in a positive personal future through SPI
Expresses enthusiasm about the SPI initiative
Is happy with time and resources available for SPI
Observable Change Agent Characteristics
Has a successful history in the organization
Is viewed as competent in current position
Experience working with different groups
Experience working with all levels of management
Knowledgeable of perspectives/needs of sponsor
Has trust, respect, and credibility with the sponsor
Is viewed as a real asset to the SPI project
Knowledgeable of the perspectives and needs of
affected people in SPI initiative
Affected people respect and trust the change agent
Effectively manages resistance to change
Works well with structure of the organization
Understands the organization's culture
Has a working “change” principles
Possesses high level of analytical skills
Understands the value of human and business issues
Has excellent communication skills
Is a team player
Is proactive, sets goals, and achieves them
Enjoys challenge and uncertainty
Feels comfortable working with sponsor
How Change Agent Acts
Has sufficient time to dedicate to the SPI project
Exerts sufficient authority to make changes
Energizes the organization to promote change
Has access to sufficient resources for SPI initiative
Knows when and how to use power and influence
Generates a high level of team work
Has vested personal commitment to the SPI project
Is proactively seeking creative solutions
Is proactively informing sponsor about SPI progress
Has
p
roperly planned SPI projec
t
These are the stages of the IDEAL
SM
model
developed by the Software Engineering Institute
(Software Engineering Institute, 2014; Kautz et al.,
2000). During the “Initiate” phase, a foundation is
laid for a series of successful improvement efforts in
the SPI initiative. It is at this stage where the
readiness assessment (utilizing the EASE model) of
an organization is conducted. In the “Diagnose”
phase, an understanding of the current technologies,
processes and organizational interactions is
established and documented to create a baseline for
the improvement activity. This information supports
the improvement planning and prioritization process,
and acts as an indicator to help track and verify the
impact of the program’s activities. The “Establish”
phase determines the foundation for the actions of a
specific improvement cycle. The course of action
taken is determined by the results of the diagnostic
activity. To implement these actions, a software
improvement plan is developed to make the
appropriate changes (introduce a new technology,
develop a new product, make improvements in
processes or change the architecture of a product),
which draws on the vision established during the
“Initiate” phase. During the “Act” phase, the
established plan is put into action, and the core work
needed to make the specific software process
improvements proceeds. Finally, the objective of the
“Leverage” phase is to analyze how the
improvement cycle has been carried out, to assemble
the lessons learned, and to incorporate these lessons
learned into the software improvement plan that will
be used in the next improvement cycle.
In our example, the SPI initiative of the software
development group consisted of IDEAL cycles with
one year duration. Readiness assessments using
EASE were conducted at the beginning of each
cycle and also in the middle of the cycle. Hence, as
the SPI initiative was planned for a three year
period, six readiness assessments were conducted.
The following sections discuss details of the
readiness assessments conducted in the SPI initiative
for this particular business unit.
Table 4: Organizational expertise relevant to SPI.
Sponsor Expertise/Experience
Experience in change management
Knowledge of SPI technology (CMMI, IEEE…)
Experience in continuous process improvement
Change Agent Expertise/Experience
Knowledge/expertise in change management
Expertise of SPI technology (CMMI, IEEE…)
Experience of SPI technology (CMMI, IEEE…)
Change Agent experience in change management
Experience in continuous process improvement
Organizational Expertise/Experience
Expertise of SPI technology (CMMI, IEEE…)
Experience of SPI technology (CMMI, IEEE…)
Experience on participating in change management
Expertise in continuous process improvement
Experience in continuous process improvement
AModeltoMeasureOrganizationalReadinessforSoftwareProcessImprovement
333
5.1 Initial Readiness Assessment of an
ABB Company using EASE
The ABB business unit in this study develops
software for power systems applications and will be
identified in the remainder of this paper as ABB
MVPower. This business unit decided in January of
2003 to start a software process improvement (SPI)
initiative and committed to have the initiative
running for three years. Hence, the data analysed is
aligned with this timeline. The sponsor for the SPI
initiative was the site manager. He vocally expressed
strong support for the SPI initiative and identified a
change agent who was a project leader from the
software development organization.
In January of 2003, the authors utilized the
EASE model to conduct an initial readiness
assessment of the ABB MPower unit. Figure 3
shows the results of the initial evaluation of the
sponsor of the SPI initiative in the three dimensions
shown in Table 2. As can be observed, in January of
2003, the sponsor seemed to be strong in his
characteristics as a sponsor and the way he talked
about the SPI initiative. However, the perception of
his actions on SPI showed a need for improvement.
Figure 3: Sponsor evaluation in January of 2003.
Figure 4 shows the evaluation of the change
agent in January of 2003. The evaluation shows that
the change agent needed to improve in all three
dimensions, particularly in how he behaved as a
change agent. This became evident because the
person selected for this role, at the time, was the
leader of the software development group and did
not have much change agent experience. He did,
however, have a very high level of credibility in the
organization and also possessed good change agent
qualities.
Figure 4 shows the evaluation in January of 2003
on the organizational situation with respect to SPI.
Figure 5 shows that there were no major stress
factors due to management issues, but that there
were some concerns related to operational issues
such as the introduction of new technologies and
people working extra hours. Also, the organization
was involved in a major ISO initiative that was
nearing completion.
Figure 4: Change agent evaluation in January of 2003.
Figure 5: Organization evaluation in January of 2003.
Figure 6 shows the evaluation of the
organizational expertise in the SPI initiative. The
organization decided to utilize the CMMI-DEV
framework for software process improvement. Their
decision was not to demonstrate a maturity level, but
to use the CMMI-DEV framework to improve their
processes. As can be observed in Figure 5, the level
of experience and expertise in SPI for the whole
organization was very limited. For this reason, the
authors worked with the organization to increase
their level of expertise in SPI activities.
Figure 6: Org expertise evaluation in Jan 2003.
0
50
100
150
What Sponsor
Expresses
Observable
Sponsor's
Characteristics
How Sponsor
Acts
Ideal
Jan 12003
0
100
200
300
400
500
What Change
Agent Expresses
Observable
Change Agent
Characteristics
How Change
Agent Acts
Ideal
Jan 12003
0
5
10
15
20
25
Management
Issues
Process Changes
Operational and
Legal
Ideal
Jan03
0
10
20
30
40
50
Sponsore
Expertise
Change Agent
Expertise
Organizational
Expertise
Ideal
Jan03
ICSOFT-EA2014-9thInternationalConferenceonSoftwareEngineeringandApplications
334
Figure 7 below shows a complete picture of the
evaluation of the four elements combined to give the
overall assessment picture in January of 2003. From
this graph it is evident that the organization was
open to the SPI initiative. The sponsor and the
change agent needed to improve their level of skills,
and the sponsor needed to improve his commitment
to the SPI initiative. Moreover, the organization
needed to improve its level of expertise in the SPI
initiative.
Figure 7: Overall organizational readiness for SPI.
5.2 Progressive Readiness Assessment
Table 5 shows the numeric values of the historical
evaluations of the readiness assessments of ABB
MVPower from Jan 2003 to Jan 2006
.
Table 5: Historical readiness assessment of ABB
MVPower from January 2003 to January 2006.
Figure 8 shows the graphic representation of the
weight values shown in Table 5. From the different
readiness assessments performed, it is interesting to
observe the changes that occurred in the three years
of the SPI initiative
.
Figure 8: Graphical representation of historical readiness
assessment for ABB MVPower.
For example, comparing the assessments from
January 2003 and July 2003, a few things can be
observed. The organizational readiness remained
constant and the organizational expertise in the SPI
activities increased. Nevertheless, the sponsor’s
commitment and the change agent readiness
significantly decreased. This trend seemed to
continue until July of 2004.
Figures 9 and 10 below show the details on the
assessments of the sponsor and the change agent in
July 2004. Both figures show a significant decrease
in the evaluation of how well the sponsor and
change agent expressed support for the SPI activity
and also how they acted towards the SPI activity. An
interesting point was that the sponsor seemed to
change negatively in his own inherent characteristics
towards the SPI initiative, while the change agent
seemed to acquire skills that made him a better
change agent.
Figure 9: Sponsor evaluation in July of 2004.
The situation in July of 2004 was definitely not
good for the SPI initiative, and something had to be
done. After deeper analysis, we discovered that there
was a breakdown in the communication between the
sponsor and the change agent. This then caused a
deep mistrust from both towards each other. The
sponsor on the one hand felt that the change agent
was not delivering the results that he expected from
the SPI initiative. On the other hand, the change
agent felt that the SPI activity was hampering his
position in the organization and that the sponsor was
not supporting him and the organization in the SPI
initiative. It took a concentrated effort to increase the
communication between the sponsor and the change
agent so that things began to turn around. As can be
observed in Table 5 and Figure 7, there was
subsequently, considerable improvement in both the
sponsor and the change agent. Also, the organization
felt more comfortable and the SPI initiative ended
on a positive note. It is important to point out, that a
direct result of the SPI initiative was the
improvement of the Requirements Engineering
0
100
200
300
400
Organizational
Acceptance
Sponsor
Commitment
Change Agent
Readiness
Organizational
Expertise
1Jan03
1Jan03
1-Jan-03 1-Jul-03 1-Jan-04 1-Jul-04 1-Jan-05 1-Jan-06
Organizational Acceptance 355 352 357 345 347 377
Sponsor Commitment 251 178 120 106 286 330
Change Agent Readiness 222 181 174 157 206 260
Organizational Expertise 223 265 299 206 286 354
0
100
200
300
400
Organizational Acceptance
Sponsor Commitment
Change Agent Readiness
Organizational Expertise
Summary: MV Group Readiness for CMMI
0
50
100
150
What Sponsor
Expresses
Observable
Sponsor's
Characteristics
How Sponsor
Acts
Ideal
Jul 12004
AModeltoMeasureOrganizationalReadinessforSoftwareProcessImprovement
335
process and this caused a reduction in the cost of
poor quality of 10% annually.
Figure 10: Change agent evaluation in July of 2004.
6 CONCLUSIONS
EASE is a model that quantifies the readiness of an
organization to commit to a software process
improvement initiative. EASE was developed as part
of the ABB software process improvement initiative.
Although EASE has been developed specifically for
assessing the readiness of an organization to
seriously engage in a software process improvement
activity, EASE can also be utilized in any other
organizational change situation, such as introduction
of a new technology, change in organizational
structure, change in customer base, introduction of a
new product or service, etc. EASE considers four
essential elements in the change situation (SPI
implementation) and they include the sponsor
readiness and commitment, change agent readiness
and commitment, organizational readiness, and
organizational level of expertise in SPI and the
specific model utilized for SPI. The sponsor plays an
essential role in exemplifying the new behaviour
(walk-the-talk), providing necessary resources,
aligning the SPI activity with business goals,
providing incentives for the new behaviour,
rewarding process improvement, and in general
being a proactive supporter of the SPI initiative. The
change agent is a multi-disciplinary person that
needs to master both the technical and organizational
aspects of the SPI initiative, must be highly
respected in the organization, must have excellent
communication skills, must communicate effectively
with the sponsor, and in general needs to have the
“fire” for the SPI initiative. The organization on the
other hand needs to have a relatively low level of
stress with other change initiatives, must have the
required level of training and skills for the SPI
initiative, needs to see tangible benefits originating
from the SPI initiative, and needs to be proactively
involved and committed to the SPI initiative. In the
future Fuzzy Logic will be used to evaluate the
elements and sub-elements in the EASE model.
REFERENCES
Debou, C., 2009, Managing Change: The Human Factor in
Process Improvement Initiatives, 1999. Presentation
from Kugler Maag CIE, Stuttgart, Germany.
Ferreira, M. G. and Wazlawick, R. S., 2011, Software
process improvement: An organizational change that
needs to be managed and motivated, World Academy
of Science, Engineering and technology.
Pries-Hehe, J. and Baskerville, R., 2009, Design theory for
managing Software Process Improvement, DESRIST
'09 Proceedings of the 4th International Conference
on Design Science Research in Information Systems
and Technology . May 7-8.
Kautz, K., Westgaard, H. H., Thaysen, K., 2000, Applying
and adjusting a software process improvement model
in practice: the use of the IDEAL model in a small
software enterprise, ICSE '00 Proceedings of the 22nd
international conference on Software engineering, pp.
626-633.
Khokhar, M. N., Zeshan, K., and Aamir, J., 2010,
Literature Review on the Software Process
Improvement Factors in Small Organizations, in 4
th
International Conference on New Trends on
Information Science and Service Science.
Kubler-Ross, D., 1969, On Death and Dying, Simon and
Schuster editors, USA.
Lopez, J. E. L. and Garay, A. P. C., 2012, Software
process improvement as an organizational self-
production process, IEEE Software, pp. 1-10.
Massey, A.P. ; Montoya-Weiss, M.M. ; Brown, S.A.,
Managing technological change when change is
mandatory, 1998, IEEE International Conference on
System, Man, and Cybernetics, vol. 5, pp. 4758-4762.
Maturro, G. and Saavedra, J., 2012, Considering People
CMM for Managing Factors that Affect Software
Process Improvement, IEEE Latin Americ
Transactions, vol. 10, no. 2, pp. 1603-1615.
Muller, S. D., Mathiassen, L., and Balsho, H. H., 2010,
Software Process Improvement as organizational
change: a metaphorical analysis of the literature,
Journal of Systems and Software, vol. 83, no. 11,
November.
Software Engineering Institute (SEI), 2014, IDEAL
SM
Model: Initiating, diagnosing, establishing, acting and
learning. Retrieved on March 13
th
of 2014 from
http://www.sei.cmu.edu/library/assets/idealmodel.pdf
0
100
200
300
400
500
What Change
Agent Expresses
Observable
Change Agent
Characteristics
How Change
Agent Acts
Ideal
Jul 12004
ICSOFT-EA2014-9thInternationalConferenceonSoftwareEngineeringandApplications
336