Page 40 - DCAP405_SOFTWARE_ENGINEERING

Unit 2: A Generic View of Process

Notes
and vital importance for future competitiveness. The most important arguments against
SPI were: Increasing workload (resource demanding), SPI suppresses the creativity and
the sense of responsibility, and it moves focus away from the project.
The most important factors for ensuring successful process improvement in the company
were: Management involvement, motivation/employee participation, and well-defined
and simple routines.

Company X
X is one of the leading companies in their field. Their products are a combination of
software (embedded software or firmware) and hardware. In addition to corporate offices
and manufacturing facilities in Norway, X has significant marketing, sales and support
operations in the USA, Europe, and the Far East. The company employs about 550 persons
in Norway, of which the firmware division employs 30 persons.
During the first step (assessment initiation), members from the SPIQ project team and
company X had an opening meeting where the objectives of the assessment were set. X
wanted to get a survey of today’s process status and potential for improvements. After
identifying some key areas of improvement, the intention was to make a plan for SPI-
actions. The assessment was focusing on project managers, customers and co-workers in
two firmware departments and one hardware department. These groups were divided
into tree subgroups: Managers, customers and developers. All departments in company X
were represented. The assessment was decided to be conducted by the SPIQ-team and the
people responsible for the assessment at company X.
In steps two and three (focus area delineation and criteria development), X used the standard
questionnaire as a starting point for internal discussions, and for the development of a
tailor-made questionnaire. A committee was put together for evaluating the questions. In
this committee there were two designers, four managers, two customers, and one from
the quality department.

After two meetings the number of questions were doubled. None of the original questions
were removed. We recommended X to reduce the number of questions, and to do some
minor changes in the wording of items, in order to be more precise in the question text.
Some rewording was subsequently done. However, the number of questions was not
reduced. No aggregate or composite questions were used; the focus was only on analysing
answers to single questions.
During step four (assessment design), it was decided that the assessment co-ordinator in
the company should hold a presentation regarding the assessments role in improving X’s
software processes. In step five (assessment implementation), the presentation was hold.
Most of the participants in the assessment were present at this meeting. After the
presentation they had 30 minutes to fill out the questionnaire. This was too little time,
however, so almost everyone had to deliver the questionnaire later. The leader of the
assessment personally visited those who did not show up for the presentation helping
them to complete the questionnaire. 32 employees from company X participated, however,
four did not deliver the forms. The participators in the assessment only answered for the
unit and those levels that were part of their own area of responsibility. Most of the
respondents participated in the analyses and interpretation of the presented result in step
six (data analysis and feedback). A half-day workshop was set up for this event. The most
important results were then presented. The problem with this session was the lack of
discussion. Although this complicated the process, the session ended with a priority list of
four key areas. These were: Flexibility vs. stability, long-term quality, teamwork, and
learning from past experiences.
Contd...

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