Software Process Assessment Validation and Improvement Prioritization

After a software process assessment is performed there are two main problems decision-makers face. First, how reliable are the assessment results presented. Though assessments are often performed by an independent competent third party, it is still important to be able to judge the validity of the determined capability profile and to assure that a faithful picture of the organisation has been captured. Second, in consideration of the results, identify what are the process-related risks for the organisation so they can guide the establishment of the priorities for a process improvement. This paper presents a method based on the dependencies between processes in order to support the validation of the assessment results and the identification of business critical processes for improvement.