Empirical evaluation of selected best practices in implementation of software process improvement

To be successfully applied in practice, software process improvement (SPI) needs not only identifying what needs to be improved, and which factors will influence its success, but also guidelines on how to implement those improvements and meet the factors. This paper proposes an SPI implementation strategy that has been developed in lines with standard SPI models and frameworks, intended to be suitable for global software development (GSD), and exploiting ideas of incremental deliveries, short iterations with frequent reviews and close collaboration with customers. Quantitative analyses of data from case studies within large GSD show that improvement teams implementing the strategy are more likely to have better progress and achieve better effectiveness in terms of improvement deployment within development teams. The results could be useful to SPI practitioners in making their SPI initiatives more successful.