Understanding and Evaluation of Software Process Deviations

Abstract: Software process improvement is often mentioned in today?s software marketplace. To be able to do process improvement, the organisation must have a process to improve from. These processes are commonly deviated from, and the PDU/PAY organisation at Ericsson AB has experienced that this happens too often within their organisation. The aim of this master thesis was to investigate why such deviations occur and how they could be prevented at PDU/PAY. A survey including a qualitative and a quantitative part was conducted at PDU/PAY to investigate this issue. The result was that processes were often deviated from due to lack of: management commitment, user involvement, synchronisation between processes, change management, anchoring of processes, and communication of processes. In addition to the conducted studies, an improvement proposal is given to the PDU/PAY organisation. This includes one organisational part and one part that is directly related to the actual work with processes. The proposal is intended to give PDU/PAY an essence of how to improve their work with their organisational processes.