A Personnel-Driven Mini Assessment Approach for Supporting Continuous System and Software Process Improvement

Assessments are fundamental to the process improvement program of any organization in the software industry. Assessments provide a view of the state, capability, and maturity of processes in an organization relative to a reference model. Formal assessments are the most recognized, and are comprehensive in nature. Although the depth of their evaluation often results in significant process improvement opportunities, formal assessments are too costly for frequent use by many organizations. The interim between assessments typically leaves these organizations without the currency of process state information necessary to effectively drive continuous process improvement. Mini-assessments have emerged as a solution. This paper presents a mini-assessment approach that offers a substantial cost reduction compared to formal assessments and satisfies the process state currency requirement. A specification of the approach is given, followed by discussions on the process improvement possible with its use, comparisons to other assessment methods, and an example implementation