Esperança Amengual

IT Service Management Process Improvement based on ISO/IEC 15504: A systematic review

Context: In recent years, many software companies have considered Software Process Improvement (SPI) as essential for successful software development. These companies have also shown special interest in IT Service Management (ITSM). SPI standards have evolved to incorporate ITSM best practices. Objective: This paper presents a systematic literature review of ITSM Process Improvement initiatives based on the ISO/IEC 15504 standard for process assessment and improvement. Method: A systematic literature review based on the guidelines proposed by Kitchenham and the review protocol template developed by Biolchini et al. is performed. Results: Twenty-eight relevant studies related to ITSM Process Improvement have been found. From the analysis of these studies, nine different ITSM Process Improvement initiatives have been detected. Seven of these initiatives use ISO/IEC 15504 conformant process assessment methods. Conclusion: During the last decade, in order to satisfy the on-going demand of mature software development companies for assessing and improving ITSM processes, different models which use the measurement framework of ISO/IEC 15504 have been developed. However, it is still necessary to define a method with the necessary guidelines to implement both software development processes and ITSM processes reducing the amount of effort, especially because some processes of both categories are overlapped.

Lessons learned from an ISO/IEC 15504 SPI programme in a company

This paper describes a first‐hand experience in Software Process Improvement within a Spanish Company which, since 2002, has been involved in an improvement programme led by our research group. We discuss the experience and the results of this improvement programme, as well as the lessons learned to deal with new future improvement initiatives in other companies of our environment. Copyright

Application of ISO/IEC 15504 in Very Small Enterprises

This paper presents the experience of application of the ISO/IEC 15504 standard in eight software companies. Firstly, the objectives, the participants and the work plan are exposed. Secondly, the implementation of the project activities and its results are summarized. And finally, the cost of the implementation is detailed. The project which has allowed this improvement effort in these organizations has been named “QuaSAR II” and represents the continuance of the “QuaSAR” project, a software process improvement initiative started in 2002 in the Balearic Islands.

Software process improvement through teamwork management

In modern organizations teamwork is considered a key factor for succeeding in business. A growing emphasis on team culture culminates with a great number of articles analyzing different aspects to improve teamwork practises. Since software development projects are normally team efforts, teamwork improvement in software organizations should also be considered essential. In these companies, software process improvement programs based on international maturity standards are current issues in software engineering investigation. In this article, we firstly establish the teamwork key factors for succeeding in software development projects. Secondly, these key factors are analysed taking the ISO/IEC 15504 as a reference improvement framework.

An ISO/IEC 15504 Security Extension

Software companies which have been involved in a process improvement programme according to ISO/IEC 15504 have already performed some steps in order to implement ISO/IEC 27000 as an information security management framework. After analysing in depth the existing relations between ISO/IEC 15504-5 base practices and ISO/IEC 27002 security controls, in this paper the security controls covered by the ISO/IEC 15504-5 processes are described, the changes over these processes which would be necessary for the implementation of the controls are detailed and an ISO/IEC 15504 Security Extension that facilitates the implementation of both standards is presented.

Team SPICE: A SPICE-Based Teamwork Assessment Model

Software engineering is currently paying special attention to cooperative and human aspects of software development. Within this new socio-technical perspective of software engineering, teamwork appears to be a relevant topic. This paper presents a SPICE-based Teamwork Assessment Model for software teams. This model, named Team SPICE, is composed of a Teamwork Reference Model (TRM) and a Measurement Framework, both introduced in previous works. In this paper, the assessment process to be followed to perform a teamwork assessment and the experience of its application to software teams are described.