Software development process audits—a general procedure

To assist development organizations in improving software quality and productivity, the AT&T Bell Laboratories Quality Assurance Center created a Design Quality Group to independently evaluate the software development processes and associated development products of our AT&T projects. These software development process audits examine software engineering techniques and tools in practice, as they fit into the overall development environment. Our strategy behind these audits is to assemble a team which, with the involvement of the developers and their managers, will: characterize the existing development process; identify project strengths and areas for improvements; and recommend possible improvements. This paper details the general approach behind this strategy.