Improvement of Software Process by Process Description and Benefit Estimation

This paper describes an actual experience of software process improvement at OMRON corporation. For effective technical transfer, a software engineering process group (SEPG) has set three principal goals as follows: (1) motivate developers to improve on their process, (2) describe and define current software process correctly and in detail, (3) present a feasible action plan for developers to follow. To attain these goals, the SEPG has proposed a process improvement procedure by describing the current process and estimating the benefits gained by the improvement. Firstly the SEPG, held a series of interviews with developers and depicted a flow map in the form of a Petri net which describes the current, software process. Secondly, the group constructed an action plan from the in-depth analysis of the current flow map, and estimated the benefits obtained if this plan were to be rigorously followed. As a result, both the action plan and the benefit estimation were agreed by the developers as a feasible action plan. Furthermore, by applying the action plan to a practical project, it was confirmed that, compared to a similar project, approximately 10% of the total effort/KLOC is reduced at test phases. Thus we came to a conclusion that the principal goals and the proposed procedure are proven to be effective for reducing the development effort at OMRON corporation.