the SPICE Trials

was set up to support the development of the ISO/IEC 15504 standard for software process assessment (SPA). The project mounted a set of trials to validate the emerging standard against the goals and requirements defined at the start of the SPICE project and to verify the consistency and usability of its component parts. A considerable number of empirical evaluation studies have been conducted during the Phase 2 SPICE Trials based on ISO/IEC PDTR 15504 (between September 1996 and June 1998). Such an exercise is unprecedented in the software engineering standards community and it provides a unique opportunity for empirical validation. The purpose of this paper is to present major parts of the findings of the empirical studies conducted as part of the SPICE Project during Phase 2 of the SPICE Trials. The topics covered in this paper include (i) investigation into reasons for performing SPAs, (ii) evaluation of the internal consistency of the capability dimension, (iii) use of interrater agreement as a measure of the reliability of assessments, (iv) evaluation of the predictive validity of process capability, (v) evaluation of an exemplar model (Part 5), (vi) identification of factors influencing assessor effort, and (vii) empirical comparison between ISO/IEC PDTR 15504 and ISO 9001