Software Process Improvement

1. Software Process Improvement Example of the process in a VSE Sigríður Andread Ásgeirsdóttir, Paul Richardson SPI

2. SPI - OWPL model • Feasibility: • CMM and SPICE unusable by small structures • Cost of SPI consultancy up to 50% of annual budget for ~42% SMEs • In addition it requires company/dept. resources • Planning habits: • 64% of SMEs plan activities on daily basis • 22% on a weekly basis • 66% do not have IT formalized in organization charts • The need: • SME structure, size and development practices call for a customised SPI model • The solution - OWPL designed to: • highlight quickly software practices that need improvement • help draw a simple plan of action for improving those practices • set up simple measures to study variance induced by improvement actions enabling a company to assess its progression. • The reality vis a vis the team we looked at: • At first sight – still too daunting for a hard-pressed small team (documentation) SPI

3. Business Goals SPI

4. Development team: 3 programmers The project: Digital reproduction (a program used by image processing department) Reprogramming of an old in-house program which is now obsolete due to lack of flexibility. Working process of digital reproduction Capture Processing Quality assurance Transfer Completed Software environment: Programmed in JAVA Eclipse CVS (open source version control – similar to SourceSafe). Documentation Microsoft Office Word Microsoft Office Visio JavaDoc (from Eclipse). Other environment: In-house development environment The image processing department (myndvinnslulína) is in the next office to the development team The digital reproduction example Software development team and environment SPI

5. The digital reproduction example The National Archives Requirements elicitationsupply Software Development Team3 Java Programmers Requirements elicitation Image Processing Line3 operators Development feedbackMaintenance feedback On-line article distribution - www.timarit.is Supply of data Maintenance feedback Web publishing dept. SPI

6. Primary Lifecycle Processes • However, we need the following processes • Supply process • Development process • Operation process • Maintenance process • Aquisition process is not necessary in this case • only in-house project • all acquisitions are already available • camera • texts to be digitized • the image processing department • off the shelf software SPI

7. Lifecycle processes used by the development team SPI

8. Supply process • Informal project plan has been made • Minimal documentation • No milestones • Informal estimation of resources • Only as soon as possible applies! SPI

9. Improved supply process Immediate improvements priority: Start elaborating a plan for the next project foreseen with the above elements. SPI

10. Development process SPI

11. Improved development process 1 Improvements priority: None of these for this project. SPI

12. Improved development process 2 Improvements priority: None of these for this project but operation and maintenance shoould be reviewed. SPI

13. Conclusion • Within the next 6 months • the supply process for the next project should be prioritised. • the operation and maintenance processes should be reviewed. • the current monitoring should be maintained • As this is a very small development team it is hard to implement complex processes. • Testing cannot fulfill ordinary testing requirements due to lack of manpower. • Programmers have to test the code from one another. • Current monitoring : • Weekly meetings • Discussed what has been done and what the next step is • The project manager reviews the other programmers code • Unit tests performed when a certain code has been finished. • CVS used to maintain source control. SPI