Why do we do software process improvement? Study on commonly used goals in practice

Abstract

Every company tries to improve its overall business, especially in the fast and reacting world of software. For these improvement activities, the development process is a major aspect. Our goal was the elicitation of common improvement goals that are considered for improving the development process. For collecting the common improvement goals, we used a mixture of methods. We started with existing literature and results of a survey. Further, we extended both by a set of workshops with industrial partners. Besides the common aspects of time, cost, and quality, some new goals, such as participation and democratization, appeared. These results lead to a more practitioner-oriented field of process improvement, since we are aware of common practical improvement goals.