Practical software process improvement - the IMPACT project

For many years now software process improvement (SPI) has been recognised as an effective way for companies to improve the quality of the software they produce and the productivity with which they work. Much work has gone into developing and selling improvement paradigms, assessment methods, modelling languages, tools and technologies. The challenge for -small-to-medium software development companies (SMEs) now is to find a way to apply these SPI technologies to realise their company's improvement goals. For SMEs the most pressing requirements for improvement paradigms are that they are not only effective but that they realise tangible results quickly, can be implemented incrementally and utilise the many existing process improvement technologies. The paper presents a framework for SPI that realises these needs. The framework is designed to utilise a range of improvement technologies and supports continuous and highly focused improvement over many projects, thus producing timely, cost-effective and tangible improvements for SMEs. The effectiveness of the framework is illustrated with its application in a small, Sydney-based, Web development company.