Using Software Inspection as a Catalyst for SPI in a Small Company

Harjumaa, Lasse; Tervonen, Ilkka; Vuorio, Pekka

doi:10.1007/978-3-540-24659-6_5

Cited by 10 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…The analysis of the few available studies revealed that the majority of reporting organizations focused on the peer review process. 8 Peer reviews are useful because they provide a lot of data, which makes applying quantitative high-maturity techniques a bit easier. However, they focus on the number and types of defects, which is a very relevant issue to safety-critical domains but not as much for our context.…”

Section: Feature: Case Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Achieving and Maintaining CMMI Maturity Level 5 in a Small Organization

Falessi

Shaw

Mullen³

2014

IEEE Softw.

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Economic achievements, success factors, and lessons learned from real-life examples offer a unique reference for practitionersintending to pursue high-maturity CMMI levels, particularly in small organizational settings. // RESEARCHERS AND PRACTITIO-NERS alike have studied process improvement for many years. 1 CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration) models, provided by the CMMI Institute, "consist of best practices that address development activities applied to products and services." 2 CMMI doesn't tell you how to implement your project and organizational processes, but it specifi es specifi c and generic practice requirements.CMMI-rated maturity levels range from 2 to 5, with a 5 denoting an organization said to be "optimizing" because it has highly mature practices that leverage the sophistication of quantitative techniques to measure projects and effectively implements organizational process improvements. High-maturity organizations foster an organization-wide environment of continuous, measured, process improvement and high performance.Achieving a high-maturity CMMI rating in a small organization (fewer than 50 people) is usually more difficult than at medium or large ones, 3,4 primarily because there are fewer experience reports for small organizations. 5,6 That said, most small organizations don't apply CMMI because it's perceived as being too diffi cult. 7 However, as businesses recognize the benefi ts of maturity models, there's growing demand for mature organizations, even if they have fewer than 50 people (http://fremle.talkingvillage.com/resource.x/1585).According to current CMMI Institute database information (http:// c m m i i n s t i t u t e . c o m / a s s e t s / presentations/2013MarCMMI.pdf), of the approximately 5,500 organizations rated worldwide, only 344 organizations have been rated level 5 (78 of which are in the US-of these, only 3 percent are small ones, and less than half are non-military). This article describes our eight-year journey in achieving, and one-year experience in maintaining, maturity level (ML) 5 in an organization called Keymind, a division of Luminpoint. Keymind provides software development, strategic marketing, and user-focused services to both commercial and government customers. Our JourneyWhen we started our journey, we were convinced of its value, but we

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Section: Feature: Case Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Achieving and Maintaining CMMI Maturity Level 5 in a Small Organization

Falessi

Shaw

Mullen³

2014

IEEE Softw.

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“…For an individual organization, this SE belief is worth confirming to justify increasing the review effort or conducting additional reviews in a troublesome project. It has been pointed out that the most basic target for process improvement is a software review (or inspection) in early development phases [4]. We adjust the result of a past study, which showed higher review effort increased field software quality, to system testing [9].…”

Section: Se Belief 1: Spending More Effort On Design and Code Reviewsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Examining Software Engineering Beliefs about System Testing Defects

Monden

Tsunoda

Barker³

et al. 2017

IT Prof.

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Research findings are often expressed as short startling sentences or software engineering (SE) beliefs such as "about 80 percent of the defects come from 20 percent of the modules" and "peer reviews catch 60 percent of the defects" [2]. Such SE beliefs are particularly important in industry, as they are attention-getting, easily understandable, and thus practically useful. In this paper we examine the power of such SE beliefs to justify process improvement through empirical validation of selected beliefs related to the increase or decrease of defects in system testing. We explore four basic SE beliefs in data from two midsize embedded software development organizations in Japan, and based on this information, identify possible process improvement actions for each organization. Based on our study, even small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can use this approach to find possible directions to improve their process, which will result in better products.

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“…As a result of this evaluation, a graphical representation of the separate process elements and the overall performance of the process is generated. The reference model is described in Tervonen et al 2001 andHarjumaa et al 2004a. An example of an assessment result profile, from a company called Buscom Oy, is depicted in Figure 2.…”

Section: Experiences In Using the Inspection Improvement Patternsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The company had started their inspection process just recently and needed to establish the process in the company's software development culture. Results of the experiment are described in greater detail in Harjumaa et al 2004a.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A pattern approach to software inspection process improvement

Harjumaa

2005

Softw Process Imprv Pract

Self Cite

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Concrete guidelines are often helpful when planning software process improvement. Small companies, in particular, need detailed and unambiguous instructions detailing what process areas to improve, and how to achieve the improvement. This article introduces a set of patterns to direct the improvement of the software inspection process. The pattern approach has been applied, since it has been used very successfully for knowledge-sharing purposes and other areas of software engineering. The approach involves an evaluation of the inspection process capability, setting an overall goal for the improvement and updating the process according to pre-defined actions. Experiments with initial patterns show that the method provides a feasible and quick way of making inspections more effective. Using patterns may also be beneficial when launching more wide-ranging SPI activities, as companies can run preliminary trials of the improvement process on a smaller scale first.

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Using Software Inspection as a Catalyst for SPI in a Small Company

Cited by 10 publications

References 22 publications

Achieving and Maintaining CMMI Maturity Level 5 in a Small Organization

Achieving and Maintaining CMMI Maturity Level 5 in a Small Organization

Examining Software Engineering Beliefs about System Testing Defects

A pattern approach to software inspection process improvement

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