Aggregating Viewpoints for Strategic Software Process Improvement - a Method and a Case Study

Decisions regarding strategic software process improvement (SPI) are generally based on the management's viewpoint of the situation, and in some cases also the viewpoints of some kind of an SPI group. This may result in strategies, which are not accepted throughout the organisation, as the views of how the process is functioning are different throughout the company. This paper describes a method for identifying the major factors affecting a process improvement goal and how the perception of the importance of the factors varies throughout the organisation. The method lets individuals from the whole development organisation rate the expected effect of these factors from their own viewpoint. In this way the strategic SPI decision can be taken using input from the entire organisation, and any discrepancies in the ratings can also give important SPI decision information. The method is applied in a case study performed at Fuji Xerox, Tokyo, which is reported in this paper. In the case study, significantly different profiles of the factor ratings came from management compared to the ones from the engineering staff. This result can be used to support the strategy decision as such, but also to anchor the decision in the organisation