Evaluation of Problem Driven Software Process Improvement

Abstract: Software development is constantly growing in complexity and several newtools have been created with the aim to manage this. However, even with thisever evolving range of tools and methodology, organizations often struggle withhow to implement a new development-process, especially when implementingagile methods. The most common reason for this is because teams implementagile tools in an ad-hoc manner, without fully considering the effects this cancause. This leads to teams trying to correct their choice of methodologysomewhere during the post-planning phase, which can be devastating for aproject as it adds further complexity to the project by introducing new problemsduring the transition process. Moreover, with an existing range of tools aimedat managing this process transition, none of them have been thoroughlyevaluated, which in turn forms the problem that this thesis is centred around.This thesis explores a method transition scenario and evaluates a SoftwareProcess Improvement method oriented around the problems that theimprovement process is aiming to solve. The goal with this is to establish ifproblem oriented Software Process Improvement is viable as well as to providefurther data for the extensive research that is being done in this field. We wishto prove that the overall productivity of a software development team can beincreased even during a project by carefully managing the transition to newmethods using a problem driven approach.The research method used is of qualitative and inductive character. Data iscollected by performing a case study, via action research, and literature studies.The case study consists of iteratively managing a transition over to newmethods, at an organization in the middle of a project, using a problem drivenapproach to Software Process Improvement. Three iterations of methodimprovement are applied on the project and each iteration acts as an evaluationon how well Problem Driven Software Process Improvement works.By using the evaluation model created for this degree project, the researchershave found that problem driven Software Process Improvement is an effectivetool for managing and improving the processes of a development team.Productivity has increased with focus on tasks with highest priority beingfinished first. Transparency has increased with both development team andcompany having a clearer idea of work in progress and what is planned.Communication has grown with developers talking more freely about userstories and tasks during planning and stand-up meetings. The researchersacknowledge that the results of the study are of a limited scope and alsorecognize that further evaluation in form of more iterations are needed for acomplete evaluation.