Improving the Software Process

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CFICSE 2001
Improving the Software Process SP-10 Lt(N) Claude
Bernard
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References

• Managing the Software Process, Watts S. Humphrey,
  Addison-Wesley, ISBN 0-201-18095-2

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The six basic principles

• Major changes to the software process must start
  at the top
• Ultimately, everyone must be involved
• Effective change requires a goal and knowledge of
  the current process
• Change is continuous
• Software process changes will not be retained
  without conscious effort and periodic
  reinforcement
• Software process improvement requires investment

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From start at the top

• Leadership a management team with the conviction
  that long-term improvements are possible and
  essential
• Managers must
• Set challenging goals
• Monitor progress
• Insist on performance
• And also
• Furnish the resources and provide continuing
  support

5
Everyone is involved

• People are the most important ingredient, thus
  fix the process not the people
• If management thinks that people are the problem,
  process improvement will appear threatening and
  will likely cause resistance to change

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Goal and knowledge

• Knowledge about the current problems and proposed
  solutions is essential to setting priorities
• Unique problems is not the rule, similar problems
  is
• Technical issues not showing up at the top.

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Change is continuous

• New people
• New skills
• New tools
• Means a different ways of solving problems
• Three point to consider when reacting to change
• Reactive changes generally make things worse
• Every defect is a improvement opportunity
• Crisis prevention is more important than crisis
  recovery

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Conscious effort and periodic reinforcement

• Human processes are entropy in nature
• Four stages of a human adoption process
• Installation
• Practice
• Proficiency
• Naturalness

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Software process improvement requires investment

• To improve, someone must work on it
• If not properly design, it will be just adjusted
  to each successive crisis
• Unplanned process improvement is wishful thinking
• Automation of a poorly defined process will
  produce poorly defined results
• Improvements are made in small steps
• Train, train . and train

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Improving the software process

• Improvement has no fixed meaning it depends on
  the starting point
• Improvement starts with assessment and measurement

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Six different contexts

• Personal
• Project
• Organisational unit
• Corporate
• Standards
• Research

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Summary

• Process improvement has many facets
• Simple categorisation of six types of process
  improvement
• Reality is a mix of all of these, and of other
  factors
• Standards and research may be the most important
  categories, as the meta-process of understanding
  processes is far from complete
• e.g. most software is developed iteratively, but
  process models are only beginning to take this
  into account fully