Page 39 - DCAP405_SOFTWARE_ENGINEERING

Software Engineering

Notes
In the first step (assessment initiation) members from the SPIQ project team had an opening
meeting with the manager of technology. This meeting resulted in formulation of two
objectives for the assessment:

1. Get a survey of today’s process status.
2. Get an “outsiders” view on the company to suggest areas for improvement.
The assessment was mainly focusing on project managers and department leaders. All the
questions in the assessment were related to software development. The scope of the
assessment in terms of organisational units and issues were all the process-areas of the
company. The assessment was decided to be conducted by the SPIQ-team and the manager
of technology.
In steps two and three (focus area delineation and criteria development), Y used the standard
questionnaire as a starting point for internal discussions, and for the development of
tailor-made questionnaires. They did not change anything, which was a bit surprising.
The purpose of doing this was the wish for external impulses. No aggregate or composite
questions were used; the focus was only on single questions.

In step four (assessment design), the date of the assessment was determined, and it was
decided that one of the researchers from SPIQ should hold a presentation for the managers
in the company. This was to be followed by the assessment. The presentation was an
introduction to SPI with the focus on general improvement. The purpose of this was to
describe the questionnaire and its purpose, and also have a quick walkthrough of the
questions.
After a short period of planning, all was set for stage five (assessment implementation).
After the presentation, the participants (10 persons) from Y filled out the questionnaires in
the meeting-room. This gave them the opportunity to discuss and agree upon the
interpretation of unclear questions in the questionnaire. The participators in the assessment
only answered for the unit and those levels that were part of their own area of responsibility.
All the information was treated confidentially. Filling out the questionnaire took about
30 minutes.

In the final step (data analysis and feedback), most of the respondents participated in the
analyses and interpretation of the preliminary result. A half-day workshop was set up for
this event. The most important results were then presented. The participants raised a lot of
questions and issues, and they started a big discussion as they reviewed and evaluated the
preliminary findings. Some of the questions were clarified and answered directly, others
were answered by reanalysing the data.
The discussion ended in a priority list of four key areas. These were: delivery (time-
schedule and budget), customer supplier-relationship, testing and configuration
management and risk control. Some of these results were not expected, while others were
obvious to the participants.
The next step for company Y will be an internal discussion of the results, and then figure
out the necessary SPI actions. However, they are first going to co-ordinate this work with
the work going on in a parallel project.
The result of the last section of the questionnaire was also of great interest. This section is
divided into tree sub-sections, and is concerned about finding the most important factors
enabling SPI success in the organisation. The most important arguments in favour of SPI
in the company Y were: Continuous adjustment to external conditions, job satisfaction,
Contd...

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