Prescription, description, reflection: the shape of the software process improvement field

  • Authors:

  • Bo Hansen;Jeremy Rose;Gitte TjøRnehøJ

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Informatics, Copenhagen Business School, Howitzvej 60 6, DK-2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark;Department of Computer Science, Aalborg University, Fredrik Bajers Vej 7, DK-9220 Aalborg, Denmark;Department of Computer Science, Aalborg University, Fredrik Bajers Vej 7, DK-9220 Aalborg, Denmark

  • Venue:
  • International Journal of Information Management: The Journal for Information Professionals
  • Year:
  • 2004

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Abstract

This article reviews 322 representative contributions to the software process improvement (SPI) literature. The contributions are categorised according to a simple framework: whether their primary goal is prescriptive (to tell SPI professionals what to do), descriptive (to report actual instances of SPI programs in software organisations), or reflective (theoretically analytical). The field is found to be rather dominated by one approach (the capability maturity model (CMM)) and heavily biased towards prescriptive contributions. Neither of these trends is necessarily beneficial, and it is argued that more theoretically reflective contributions could encourage a diversity of approaches which might also benefit practitioners.