March 2000
Volume 2 • Number 2

Contents

Key Success Factors for Business Based Improvement

This article is based on the results from the European Union project PICO and discusses software process improvement from the business manager’s viewpoint. Thirty experts have contributed to a framework into which all methodologies fit describing how they can be combined to achieve the business manager’s goals and perceptions. Experiences and case studies have been contributed from a wide range of different size firms from 11 different EU countries. Specifically, the article discusses key topics to be taken into consideration: business strategies, process and business indicators and their relationship, goal analysis and measurement, people factors, and infrastructure issues. The establishment of a quantitative feedback and learning cycle is emphasized.

Key words: business improvement, innovation, return on investment, software process improvement, strategies

by Miklós Biró, Sztaki, Budapest, Hungary and Richard Messnarz, ISCN, Ireland & ISCN Regionalstelle, Graz, Austria

INTRODUCTION

Many process improvement experts are too convinced from only one (their own) approach, leading to statements such as: Only the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) will work; or, only Bootstrap will work; or, only SPICE (ISO 15504) is a comprehensive enough assessment framework; or, just skip all assessment methodologies and use goal-based metrics; and so forth.

This article discusses the experience of 30 experts from 11 European countries and proposes a combined use of methodologies. These experts worked together from 1995 to 1998 in a European Leonardo da Vinci Project Process Improvement Combined apprOach (PICO) (Biro et al. 1993). This combination of business aspects with pragmatic improvement approaches is essential in order to make the right improvement decisions. It is senseless to make process improvement with just a pragmatic goal to formalize. Return on investment (ROI) and the organization’s business success must be the real drivers of any process improvement action.