Measuring and improving software process in China

Measurement is an important facility to support effective and reasonable management. Software development has its inherent property of high-dependency on the personal capability of software engineers that causes the variance and instability of software processes: Therefore measurement for software process has long been a challenge. This paper discusses the major problems in software process measurement, presents an active measurement model (AMM) to support software process improvement (SPI). Based on the AMM, software organizations can establish adaptive measurement process and execute the measure just close-related the process goals, which focuses on their particular business environment. Subsequently, some methods of establishing the adaptive measurement process and the appropriate software process performance baseline to support higher level quantitative management are suggested. The application and implementation of AMM and the related methods is introduced in the end. These works were integrated in a toolkit called SoftPM, which was used widely in China.