Evaluation and Improvement of Processes Assets: A Real Collaborative Experience

Software development organizations must improve the quality of their products, increase their productivity, reduce the projects´ costs and increase the projects´ predictability aiming to maintain their competitiveness in the market. So, it is essential to invest on software process and support approaches to continually improve the processes on this volatile market. This paper presents a collaborative approach to evaluate and improve the processes assets of software development organizations, based on internationally well-known standards and process models. The approach is supported by automated tools from the TABA Workstation and is part of a wider improvement strategy constituted of three layers (organizational layer, process execution layer and external entity layer). This paper aims to emphasize that process is not the only important perspective to a software process improvement program, but also the maturity of the people (human resource). Moreover, a first experience of use of the collaborative approach is also presented.