Gleison Santos

Implementing Software Process Improvement Initiatives in Small and Medium-Size Enterprises in Brazil

Appropriate process implementation approaches are fundamental for small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) to obtain the most of software process improvement (SPI) benefits. COPPE/UFRJ has been providing SPI consultancy services to the Brazilian software industry for more than two decades. In order to cope with factors that have influence on SPI success, we developed an approach to implement SPI initiatives based on the Brazilian software process model (named MPS model) through the adoption of a SPI strategy (named SPI-KM) and the support of a process-centered software engineering environment named Taba Workstation. This paper presents the work conducted in a group of Brazilian SMEs aiming to deploy the MPS model based initiatives using the SPI-KM strategy supported by the Taba Workstation. We also discuss the lessons learned from implementing SPI in this group of SMEs and also other lessons collected throughout previous SPI experiences.

Applying ISO 9001: 2000, MPS.BR and CMMI to Achieve Software Process Maturity: BL Informatica's Pathway

Customer satisfaction, quality improvement and rework reduction are known to be the most important benefits obtained through deployment of software process maturity models and standards within an organization. Since 2003 BL Informatica has been motivated and has established and maintained its software processes based on international standards (like ISO 9001:2000) and maturity models (like MPS.BR and CMMI). In spite of the lack of financial and human resources, the organization achieved satisfactory results. This paper describes BL Infomaticas software processes improvement plan, lessons learned, difficulties and benefits that where collected during the execution of the improvement plan. It also presents quantitative results that demonstrate the return on investment during these years.

Taba workstation: supporting software process deployment based on CMMI and MR-MPS.BR

Deployment of software processes based on reference models is a knowledge-intensive task, i.e., a great amount of technical knowledge must be applied in order to guarantee conformance and adherence of processes deployed to the reference models adopted. Moreover, software process deployers have to deal with organizational and individual cultural problems on a regular basis, for instance, resistances to organizational changes. Therefore, the success of software process deployment within an organization or organizational unit depends on both technical and social aspects of the software process deployment strategy definition and execution. This paper presents the Toba Workstation, an enterprise-oriented Process-centered Software Engineering Environment (PSEE) constituted of an integrated set of tools to support software process deployment based on the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) and the Reference Model for Brazilian Software Process Improvement (MR-MPS.BR). Software process appraisals demonstrated that the Taba Workstation constitutes one of the most important organizational assets to facilitate the success of software process deployment initiatives and to overcome the inherent difficulties.

MPS.BR: A Tale of Software Process Improvement and Performance Results in the Brazilian Software Industry

In December 2003 a Brazilian nationwide program was created aiming at improving software processes. The MPS.BR Program is responsible for a great evolution in the software development scenario in Brazil by providing the means to support software process improvement initiatives based on the MPS Model. In 2008 a project named iMPS was launched to enable the analysis of the Performance Results of organizations that adopted the MPS Model. This paper describes some of the findings of the studies that have already been conducted. Preliminary evidences show improvement trends regarding cost, quality, schedule, and productivity, especially for those organizations that adopted the MPS Model for continuous improvement purposes.

The use of an enterprise ontology to support knowledge management in software development environments

Software engineering is knowledge-intensive activity and knowledge is thought to be the most important asset in an organization. Therefore this paper presents an approach to support Knowledge Management in Software Development Environments that is strongly based on ontologies: Enterprise Oriented Software Development Environments. After describing the components of such environments, this paper focuses on the Enterprise Ontology and on three tools developed based on this ontology: a ‘yellow pages’ tool which shows the distribution of competencies in the organization, a tool to support the allocation of people to software projects and a graphic tool for representing and visualizing organizational processes.

Building Ontology Based Tools for a Software Development Environment

Knowledge has been thought to be the most important asset in an Organization, having a significant impact on its competitiveness. Software development is knowledge-intensive but software development environments lack from specific support of knowledge management. In this paper, we present an enterprise ontology that supports the development of two case tools: an ’yellow pages’ tool that aims to represent the distribution of knowledge, skills and experiences trough the organizational structure and a tool to support human resource allocation planning in software projects based on the reuse of organizational knowledge about human resource skills and allocation. The work is concerned with Knowledge Management and Enterprise-Oriented Software Development Environments concepts.

MPS.BR Program and MPS Model: Main Results, Benefits and Beneficiaries of Software Process Improvement in Brazil

Over the past years Brazil has done big investments in software quality. In 2010 the investment was among the highest in the world. Among them, the long term MPS. BR program focuses on improving the software process quality of Brazilian companies. Therefore, this paper intends to describe its software process improvement reference model (MR-MPS) and the most important results accomplished to date on Government, Industry and University scenarios. The Brazilian Government had endorsed the MPS adoption as a mean to increase the software industry competitiveness both locally and globally. In the University scenario, the MPS model contributes to transfer software engineering knowledge to the Industry and allows the identification of new research challenges. The quantification of benefits in the Industry is based on the iMPS family of surveys which allow both performance results characterization and performance variation analysis considering organizations that adopted the MPS model. Quantitative data have shown the MPS model acceptance by the Industry. Moreover, the obtained results evidence improvements reduction of cost and schedule and increase of productivity and quality in the software projects.

Reference model for software process improvement: a Brazilian experience

Recent research efforts about quality in the software area demonstrate that a concentrated effort is necessary to improve software process. Mainly in Brazil, there is an urge to enhance software processes performance aiming to improve the quality of software products and to increase Brazilian organizations competitive advantages both in the national and international markets. This work describes an approach developed to establish the base for Brazilian organizations to improve software processes. The focus of this work is to increase the software development capability of small and medium size companies in a fast pace. The presented approach consists of the development of a Reference Model for software process improvement and an appraisal method for the Brazilian software industry. This model has been deployed in several Brazilian companies thorough the support of Software Development Environments. The pilot experience and empirical validation results of application of the presented approach are also described in this paper.

Knowledge Management in an Enterprise-Oriented Software Development Environment

Software Development Environments have evolved to support software developers activities, and to support organizations to achieve goals such as productivity enhancement, quality improvement, cost reducing, and decrease of time-to-market solutions. In this context, have appeared the Process-centered Software Development Environments and, more recently, the Enterprise-Oriented SoftwareDevelopment Environments. This paper presents the main approaches adopted on the Taba Workstation, a software development meta-environment, to support knowledge management in the context of Enterprise-Oriented Software Development Environments: an ontology-based infrastructure, a knowledge acquisition tool, and a community of practice system.

Learning organizational knowledge: an evolutionary proposal for requirements engineering

The rapid deployment of high quality commercial technology often results in organizational reengineering. These changes reflect in different software engineering aspects, as the increase of software complexity. Within heterogeneous environments, due to the variety of users classes and their geographical distribution, a common understanding of the domain knowledge can be a hard task and would lead to a high uncertainty of the knowledge of real needs. User centered design methods along with knowledge engineering techniques proved to be suitable in such cases. This paper describes an evolutionary proposal for requirements engineering of a system to support the management of telecommunication networks. The proposal enhanced and speeded the software development, achieving a better acceptance of the system since the software group managed to efficiently acquire the organizational knowledge.