INVESTIGATING THE IMPROVEMENT SPACE OF SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT ORGANISATIONS

Joseph Trienekens, Rob Kusters, Frans van Veen, Dirk Kriek, Daniel Maton, Paul Siemons

2006

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.

References

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  2. Boltzmann L., 2000. Entropie und Warscheinlichkeit, Ostwalds Klassiker, Bd 286.
  3. Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute, 2006, CMMI website, http://www.sei.cmu.edu/cmmi/.
  4. Kusters R.J., J.J.M. Trienekens, 2005. Software Process Improvement from a Business Perspective, submitted to: The International Journal of Information Management.
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Paper Citation


in Harvard Style

Trienekens J., Kusters R., van Veen F., Kriek D., Maton D. and Siemons P. (2006). INVESTIGATING THE IMPROVEMENT SPACE OF SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT ORGANISATIONS . In Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - Volume 1: ICEIS, ISBN 978-972-8865-41-2, pages 3-10. DOI: 10.5220/0002443300030010


in Bibtex Style

@conference{iceis06,
author={Joseph Trienekens and Rob Kusters and Frans van Veen and Dirk Kriek and Daniel Maton and Paul Siemons},
title={INVESTIGATING THE IMPROVEMENT SPACE OF SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT ORGANISATIONS},
booktitle={Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - Volume 1: ICEIS,},
year={2006},
pages={3-10},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0002443300030010},
isbn={978-972-8865-41-2},
}


in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - Volume 1: ICEIS,
TI - INVESTIGATING THE IMPROVEMENT SPACE OF SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT ORGANISATIONS
SN - 978-972-8865-41-2
AU - Trienekens J.
AU - Kusters R.
AU - van Veen F.
AU - Kriek D.
AU - Maton D.
AU - Siemons P.
PY - 2006
SP - 3
EP - 10
DO - 10.5220/0002443300030010