Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
that this is something to be regretted and dealt with. An improvement model is pre-
cisely the guide which is needed to articulate all the activities related to the improve-
ment, as well as all the other models involved, of course.
In this sense, and aiming to support the SPI initiatives within a VSE, we have de-
veloped the COMPETISOFT project [8]. In this project great importance was given to
the model for guiding SPI activities, the goal being to carry out SPI initiatives follow-
ing a systematic and coherent approach. COMPETISOFT maintains that if we are to
help small companies set up and pursue process improvement, then a guideline which
will address the improvement activities is needed. We should also point out that one
success factor for SPI initiatives in VSEs is for the improvement effort to be guided
by means of specific procedures and the combination of different approaches [7].
Given all this, one of the components of the Methodological Framework developed by
COMPETISOFT is a specific
framework for guiding SPI
activities
(
improvement
framework
). The other two components are a Process Reference Model (based on
MoProSoft [12]) and a Process Evaluation Model (this conforms with the ISO/IEC
15504 standard [9]). The aim of this paper is simply to show the different components
of
the improvement framework
(proposed by COMPETISOFT's Methodological
Framework) and its application in eight VSEs.
The paper is structured as follows. The next section presents related works. The
Methodological Framework of COMPETISOFT is then described. Section 4 explains
the
improvement framework
and its different components, and section 5 gives a de-
scription of its application in eight case studies. Lastly, an analysis is given and our
conclusions are set out.
2 Related Work
There are several proposals that present a set of processes which small companies
could use to reach significant benefit from process improvement. Among others, these
include: MoProSoft [9], MPS.BR [10], Adept [11] and Rapid [12]. All of these pro-
posals are related to assessment methods or process reference models and all of them
define a group of processes that should be taken into account by small companies in
their improvement efforts. Nevertheless, only in some of these proposals is a process
related to the activities to guide process improvement described. We could mention,
for instance, MoProSoft, which describes Process Management and MPS.BR, which
describes Process Assessment and Improvement.
With regard to research on models that direct improvement implementation for
small companies, several proposals have emerged in recent years. These include,
amongst others: IMPACT [13], MESOPyME [14], PROCESSUS [15], and the appli-
cation of the IDEAL model to small and medium enterprises [16, 17].
However, these proposals do not describe in detail a framework that integrates dif-
ferent components (such as strategies, methodologies, processes and tools) in guiding
the execution of SPI initiatives on small companies. The main contribution to the
subject of SPI in VSEs that this work intends to make is to guide the implementation
of process improvement in detail, by means of an integrated
improvement framework
which VSEs would be able to take on.
