A Low‐overhead method for software process appraisal

AbstractThis article describes a low‐overhead method of software process appraisal that has been developed and used by the Centre for Software Process Technologies (CSPT) to appraise small‐to‐medium sized software development organisations in Northern Ireland (NI) that have little or no experience of software process improvement programmes.During the appraisal, information is collected and reviewed to produce a findings report. The findings report consists of a list of strengths, issues and suggested actions for each of the process areas evaluated. The suggested actions detail how the assessed company may improve their processes in line with their business goals. Because the NI software industry is mainly composed of small‐to‐medium sized software development companies, it is sometimes difficult, both in terms of financial expense and time, for such companies to engage in regular appraisals with the CSPT appraisal team. Therefore, since the main purpose of the CSPT is to instil a software process improvement culture into the NI software industry, a pragmatic and relatively non‐evasive solution has been developed.This solution has two parts. The first part enables an initial software process appraisal to be performed on‐site by the CSPT appraisal team. The second part is an on‐line appraisal tool used by the company itself during the follow‐on periodic self‐appraisals. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.