Assessing and improving the front end activities of software development
International Journal of Business Information Systems
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Many software organizations engage in software process improvement (SPI), but process descriptions may soon become outdated especially if the organization, for a while, has given low priority to SPI. As a result, software organizations may need to re-engineer process descriptions that are inconsistent with desired process practices. While the literature addresses how organizations can re-engineer business processes and legacy systems, no guidance exists on re-engineering legacy process descriptions. Software process re-engineering (SPR) is a transitional activity that helps organizations effectively re-engage in SPI by assessing legacy process descriptions; selecting process descriptions that need to be removed, innovated, or implemented; and defining a plan to align process descriptions with desired process practices. SPR results in a repository of managed process descriptions and a plan for disciplined software process management. In this article, we derive principles for SPR, use these principles to propose a model for re-engineering legacy process descriptions, and present an industrial case study to demonstrate the effectiveness of the model. In the presented case, SPR had several benefits: it leveraged earlier investments in SPI; it engaged key stakeholders in revitalizing improvement efforts; it created a shared understanding of the organization's desired process practices; and, it established a solid platform for continued SPI. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.