Method to Evaluate Process Performance Focused on Minimizing Resistance to Change

Abstract

Software process improvement is a way that allows organizations to get a competitive advantage toward its competitors, therefore, in order to implement a successfully software process improvements process assessment is a key element, because it is the firsts step to know the performance of the organizational software process. Unfortunately, the current approaches to evaluate processes performance in software organizations most of the time increase the people resistance to perform software process improvement initiatives because they are based on applying questionnaires that people perceive as an assessment of their job. Besides, questionnaires used in those approaches are adaptations from models and standards mainly ISO 15504 and CMMI. Consequently the processes gaps are not focus on organization needs, however, organizations use these gaps as targets in the implementation of software process improvements. As a result, the obtained processes do not reflect the needs of the organizational business goals nor the way the organization works. This paper presents an approach to carry out internal fast assessment to software process using an alternative way to do it. So, resistance to change is minimized. The method is focused on using internal best practices and the organization business goals as a main source to assess process performance. This way allows organizations to identify improvements opportunities based on business goals needs and to address the improvement effort to those processes that need to be improved in order to achieve these needs.