ISO9000 CERTIFICATION AS A BUSINESS DRIVER: THE SPICE ROAD ISO9000 CERTIFICATION AS A BUSINESS DRIVER: THE SPICE ROAD

The relationship between software process improvement and the achievement of business goals is not always obvious. The main objective of this paper is to clearly express this relationship using the SPICE, Software Process Improvement and Capability dEtermination (ISO 15504) model for achieving business goals [Laciness, 96], in this case, preparing for ISO9000 [ISO9001, 94] certification. The project described here had as main objectives to cater for the detected need of a method to accomplish ISO9000 requirements in an organisation that develops software and to provide this support for achieving certification to an SME at low cost. The paper outlines the work carried out to define an improvement plan based on the SPICE model [SPICE, 96]with the ISO9000 certification as a business objective. SPICE is a reference model that can be used, among other things, as a basis for laying down simple, clear and sequential steps for preparing an organisation for an ISO9000 audit. The development of the improvement plan has been done taking into account as much as possible both experience and consolidated data. Considering that there is a strong possibility of ambiguities in interpreting the ISO9000 clauses and in mapping the ISO9000 clauses into the SPICE framework, this paper wants to be also a base for future discussions inside the software community. Keywords: SPICE, ISO9000, software process improvement, improvement plans, business driver