Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
this process because in the early applications we observed that it is the iteration, com-
posed of the
formulation and execution of improvements
, which requires the greatest
amount of effort in the SPI initiative. What is more, this load falls mainly upon the or-
ganization. For the definition of this process we have used the SCRUM agile method
because it provides support for project management and it focused on small teams [23].
The purpose of this process is to offer all those who are involved in the improvement
cycle of small organizations an agile sub-process which allows them to take part in
carrying out the improvement opportunities found and with which they have some rela-
tionship within the VSE. Fig. 4 shows a break-down of the activities for
formulating
and
executing
improvements
which follow the SCRUM philosophy.
4.4 Strategy for Process Selection and Prioritization
A complete description of this strategy is presented in [24]. In this strategy we have
defined a set of processes which we consider to be of high-priority when initiating the
implementation of SPI initiative in VSEs. The fundamental principle of the proposal
is that process improvement must be connected to the other responsibilities of soft-
ware process management. The prioritization of these processes is established so as to
deploy a basic process management infrastructure (as the process improvement is not
an isolated activity, but is closely related to other activities of the software process
management). The processes selected and their priorities are:
•
First of all, the process improvement process group (PIM.1 Process establishment,
PIM.2 Process assessment, and PIM.3 Process improvement)
•
Secondly, the management process group (MAN.1 Organizational alignment,
MAN.3 Project management and MAN.6 Measurement)
•
Thirdly, the support process group (SUP.10 Change request management, SUP.8
Configuration management, SUP.7 Documentation, and SUP.1 Quality assurance).
•
Finally, the engineering process group (ENG.1 Requirements elicitation, ENG.2
System requirements analysis, ENG.3 System architectural design, ENG.4 Soft-
ware requirements analysis, ENG.5 Software design, ENG.6 Software construc-
tion, ENG.7 Software integration, ENG.8 Software testing, ENG.11 Software
maintenance)
Base practices of the process groups of engineering and support are described in the
process reference model of COMPETISOFT. The main practices of the process
groups of improvement and management are likewise described in the three compo-
nents of the
improvement framework
described above.
4.5 Tools to Support the Improvement Process
We have also developed a tool called GENESIS [25], which is used to support the
person Responsible for process improvement (RPI) in the management and imple-
mentation of an SPI initiative and in the administration of generated knowledge.
We might add that this framework has been described with the standard SPEM 2.0
and edited with the EPF Composer, thereby generating documentation in a standard
format which is updated and available to organizations through the Web.
