Authors:
Joseph Trienekens
1
;
Rob Kusters
1
;
Frans van Veen
2
;
Dirk Kriek
2
;
Daniel Maton
2
and
Paul Siemons
3
Affiliations:
1
Eindhoven University of Technology, Netherlands
;
2
Quality House B.V., Netherlands
;
3
Metrific, Netherlands
Keyword(s):
Software process improvement, entropy, empirical research results.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Databases and Information Systems Integration
;
Enterprise Information Systems
;
Information Systems Analysis and Specification
;
Software Engineering
;
Software Measurement
Abstract:
Actual results of software process improvement projects happen to be quite disappointing in practice. Although many software development organisations have adopted improvement models such as CMMI, it appears to be difficult to improve software development processes in the right way, e.g. tuned to the actual needs of the organisation and taking into account the environment (e.g. the market) of an organisation. This paper presents a new approach to determine the direction of improvement for an organisation. This approach is based on literature research as well as an empirical investigation among eleven software development organisations in The Netherlands. The results of the research show that software development organisations can be classified and can be positioned on the basis of their internal and external entropy, c.q. the level of (dis)order in the business system and its environment. Based on a possible imbalance between the internal and external entropy, directions for software
process improvement can be determined. As such the new approach can complement and improve the application of current software process improvement methodologies, e.g. CMMI.
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