An empirical study identifying high perceived value practices of CMMI level 2

Abstract

We have conducted face-to-face questionnaire based interview sessions with twenty-three Malaysian software practitioners in order to determine the perceived value associated with the specific practices of "requirements management", "process and product quality assurance" and "configuration management" process areas of CMMI level 2 in the stage representation. The objective of this study is to identify the extent to which a CMMI practice is used in order to develop a finer-grained framework, which encompasses the notion of perceived value within specific practices. This will provide software process improvement (SPI) practitioners with some insight into designing appropriate SPI implementation strategies. We asked practitioners to choose and rank "requirements management", "process and product quality assurance" and "configuration management" practices against the five types of assessments (high, medium, low, zero or do not know). From this, we propose the notion of 'perceived value' associated with each practice. We have identified 'high' and 'medium' perceived values CMMI level 2 practices. We have also identified the viewpoints of developers and managers about these practices. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.