and a case study

Software process improvement is a challenge in general and in particular for small- and medium-sized companies. Assessment is one important step in improvement. However, given that a list of improvement issues has been derived, it is often very important to be able to prioritize the improvement proposals and also look at the potential dependencies between them. This paper comes from an industrial need to enable prioritization of improvement proposals and to identify their dependencies. The need was identified in a small- and medium-sized software development company. Based on the need, a method for prioritization and identification of dependencies of improvement proposals was developed. The prioritization part of the method is based on a multi-decision criteria method and the dependencies are identified using a dependency graph. The developed method has been successfully applied in the company, where people with different roles applied the method. The paper presents both the method as such and the successful application of it. It is concluded that the method worked as a means for prioritization and identification of dependencies. Moreover, the method also allowed the employees to discuss and reason about the improvement actions to be taken in a structured and systematic way. Copyright c © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. KEY WORDS: software process improvement; prioritization; dependency mapping; packaging; decision support; industrial case stud