Assessment of a software process assessment process

Summary form only given. The process of software process assessment presented in this paper is based on the software process assessment standard of ISO/IEC and practices applied in a software process improvement project with small software developing organizations. A project to establish a software process improvement network in the Satakunta region (SataSPIN) in Western Finland was started in August 1998. The ultimate objective of the project is to help ten small enterprises in the software business to develop their operations using international software process models. The project uses ISO/IEC 15504 TR (SPICE) as the software process assessment and improvement framework. The project is now moving on to its second phase, in which more software companies in the Satakunta region and more external advisors will be involved. The experiences of the first phase will be used to assist the SPI efforts of the whole software industry in the region. During the SataSPIN project a framework for software process improvement initiation was developed. The framework consists of three phases. The first phase aims at understanding the company needs and, on the other hand, the possibilities of SPI in achieving the business goals of the company. In the second phase the selected processes are assessed by using the SPICE Part 5 compatible model to provide detailed ideas for software process improvement. In the third phase of the framework the ideas are developed into actions