Business Process Performance Measurement for Rollout Success

Abstract: Business process improvement for increased product quality is of continuous importance in the software industry. Quality managers in this sector need effective, hands-on tools for decision-making in engineering projects and for rapidly spotting key improvement areas. Measurement programs are a widespread approach for introducing quality improvement in software processes, yet employing all-embracing state-of-the art quality assurance models is labor intensive. Unfortunately, these do not primarily focus on measures, revealing a need for an instant and straightforward technique for identifying and defining measures in projects without resources or need for entire measurement programs. This thesis explores and compares prevailing quality assurance models using measures, rendering the Measurement Discovery Process constructed from selected parts of the PSM and GQM techniques. The composed process is applied to an industrial project with the given prerequisites, providing a set of measures that are subsequently evaluated. In addition, the application gives foundation for analysis of the Measurement Discovery Process. The application and analysis of the process show its general applicability to projects with similar constraints as well as the importance of formal target processes and exhaustive project domain knowledge among measurement implementers. Even though the Measurement Discovery Process is subject to future refinement, it is clearly a step towards rapid delivery of tangible business performance indicators for process improvement.